


Silver, Gold, Iron

by shadesofbrixton



Series: Theme and Variations: The AU Collection [3]
Category: A Knight's Tale (2001)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Western, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-24
Updated: 2005-07-24
Packaged: 2019-10-09 11:54:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17406425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadesofbrixton/pseuds/shadesofbrixton
Summary: The Western AU. Geoff is a writer with a gambling problem. Wat owns the only bar in town. Gratuitous chaps and general dustiness ensues.





	1. Chapter 1

Wat hadn't known, when he'd had the saloon built, that the railroad would be laid so close to where he provides rooms to rent. Nevertheless, this is the outcome, and the saloon immediately flourishes because of it. His customers come straight off the rail, dusty and thirsty and exhausted, needing baths, bottles, and beds to throw themselves into, and Wat provides solutions to all three problems.  
  
The saloon has no name, because it needs no name, and if it must be referred to as anything, he's heard it called Ireland. He doesn't know if this is because his patrons think he hails from the island, or because he is the only saloon in the state to import Irish whiskey, but he doesn't mind much either way. So far west, there's no ill will toward the Irish, and he does honest, hard work and supports his sisters through the saloon instead of foisting them off to the grocer or the fancy hotel down in town proper.   
  
The Fowlehursts, in fact, are some of the oldest what was once the old shanty town. They've been there as long as the mayor, or longer, and it's that fact as well that keeps Wat in business. The mayor likes him, likes that Wat never feels the need to open his stupid mouth and say anything about the odd scar on the man's cheek. He knows the importance of keeping people happy with loyalty, and he knows the importance of silence. He doesn't take the bags of silver or the pouches of raw gold that the sheriff sometimes bulges his pockets with, but he doesn't turn down the bandits when they can rent proper rooms, as long as they're good to the girls and don't run around with their guns hanging out.  
  
All in all, life could be worse. The summers are hot, but the breeze is good – if a little dusty. The winters – now – are harsh and shunting, and reminds him how far he is away from Carolina, but that it's better this way. It's shorter, at least, even if it's not any less cold. The houses are all creaky, and when Wat visits his brother-in-laws-to-be for supper, they sometimes work on mending the cracks where the wind creeps through with plug and skins. But the saloon's rooms are steady and safe, because he's built with milled timber, not proper logs, and stone, and he is determined to make it last.  
  
It is his life.   
  
The four o'clock tumbles into town, a shrill blast in the freezing air, and Wat is glad of the door and the high stoked fire, and the many rather excitable men who keep the warmth in with their own tempers. Women drift toward the carriages that wait to bump them into town, and children clamor over wheels and boxes to pet the horses that have been pulled out of Wat's stable for service. They stamp their feet to keep warm, and their breath rushes out of their flared nostrils in fragrant huffs, but otherwise, they permit the touching.  
  
Wat, who is watching from the door, pulls his arms closer to his body, and rub for warmth. He likes to get a good look at anyone who approaches, so he'll know if he needs to signal for the shotgun that he's got aimed from the second floor. He doesn't like to use it, but he has, before.   
  
A few men, alone, drift toward the saloon, and make their way in. One, though, straggles behind. The man isn't poor, Wat can tell form his clothes – the jacket of stained leather that looks particularly well fitted, for example. It comes to mid-calf and it keeps off the dust and the rain and both the cut up the back of the coat and the way the man walks makes Wat think he belongs on a horse. Until he sees the man's face, he thinks he's a cowboy – the sort he's been told by the blacksmith to watch out for, the ones who snag flocks and steal sheep and frenzy the bulls.  
  
But as he approaches, he can tell that this man is not like any he's ever had in his saloon before. He moves with an ill-concealed grace, and his eyes are sharp and curious, but know to mask themselves. His hands look like they want to be busy, and intend to be in short order. He carries no baggage, save a small case no larger than a knapsack in one hand – but by the way he carries it, it is heavy. There is no tell-tale bulge of shotgun along his long, leather-clad thighs, nor a jaunty hang of a holster on his hip.  
  
Wat doesn't need to check the man's ticket to know that he is from New York.  
  


* * *

  
  
The man behind the bar requires the first night of payment up front, so Geoff leaves his last handful of coins on the table and puts his name into the ledger. He's interested to see that no one cares what his name is, and that the people above him have not bothered to disguise their names in an untidy scrawl. This sort of honesty is odd for Geoff, and he spends a moment scratching at the back of his neck, above the collar of his coat, thinking about it. After a moment, though, he follows the barman up the stairs at the back of the room, and accepts the skeleton key from him with a stern nod.   
  
Geoff takes time to notice the odd things, like the strange glassy hue of the man's eyes, and the ginger color of his day's-end beard, slightly lighter than the rest of his hair, and the way he casts a suspicious eye on everything, as though he is checking to make sure everything is in its place. As the hallway is comprised entirely of doors, Geoff isn’t sure he wants to know what would be consider 'out of place'. But the barman seems satisfied, and shows Geoff his room with a grunt, and palms him the key.   
  
"Water there," he says, and points at a basin and pitcher. "Mirror there. No razor, you'll have brought your own." It isn't a question, but Geoff nods anyway. "Or there's a barber in town," the man says with a shrug, and Geoff can't remember the last time he could afford a barbershop shave. "Breakfast at seven, supper at five, what you do for dinner is your own business. 'Cept on Tuesdays, kitchen's closed. If you miss a meal, you'll go hungry."  
  
Geoff doesn't know how long he plans on staying, but it's good to know he'll at least be fed. The barman leaves him, and Geoff is pleased to note that the door does indeed lock from the inside. He's sure that the barman has another key, probably on a large metal ring somewhere, but he seems too solemn a fellow to be in on some widely orchestrated crime ring involving a reputable inn.  
  
Instead of thinking of it further, Geoff strips off his jacket, heavy with wet from the rain, and lets it drip near the banked fire. He goes to the basin and towels his hair dry, washes his face and hands, and removes his shirt. Then he goes to the case, which he has left waiting for him on the narrow, low bed pushed up against one wall, and snaps it open.  
  
There is a small desk, an appropriate size for letter writing or monetary correspondence, which indicates to Geoff that the rooms are equipped at least to maintain a lengthy stay from any one guest. The room has a few homey touches – a vase with flowers on one window ledge, a docile picture of a family hanging over a chest of drawers – that indicate some hand other than the barman's has had influence here. Geoff peruses the surroundings and, when he can delay no longer, flips the top off of the case.  
  
The Underwood gleams up at him, its keys like teeth. Sucking in a breath, Geoff pulls the typewriter out of its carrying case and sets it on the desk. There is paper on the bottom that follows, and he sets that beside it. Out of the top of the case, where there is room for ribbon and spare inking sets, Geoff pulls his few personal items and lays them on the bed: a cracked piece of glass, a straightedge razor, a silver-handled switchblade, a gold pocket watch with chain, a smooth black stone, and a small notepad with graphite pencil. The notepad is black leather, with a strap of leather that wraps around it, and half of its pages show the odd wear of being written on, even when the book is closed.  
  
Geoff checks the time, replaces the watch on the bed, removes his shoes, and sits in front of the Underwood.  
  
He stares at the keys.  
  


* * *

  
  
Wat is startled when, three hours later, the man stumbles up to the bar of the saloon. Wat sees him in the reflection of the mirror that stretches its length, and turns to ask what he can do. The man is tripping not from intoxication but what appears, from all accounts, to be joy. He lands hard against the bar, propping himself on both arms, and gives Wat a canny look from ear to ear. He slams a coin down on the bar and orders a whiskey.   
  
"And a round for the gentlemen," he adds, somehow sarcastically, with a broad sweep toward the table he had come from. There is a pile of playing cards and chips in the middle of the table, and the three men who are staring at them less than pleased.   
  
Wat frowns, but pulls out four glasses and pours.   
  
"Thank you," the man says, and leans over and claps him on the shoulder, and raises his eyebrows expectantly.  
  
"Wat," Wat supplies. Everyone wants to know their bartender's name. It provides an air of intimacy that usually leads to rambling about things that Wat couldn't give a damn about.  
  
"Geoff," the man replies, grins, and scoops all four glasses up together.  
  
Wat frowns again. This will not end well.  
  


* * *

  
  
By the end of the night, as Geoff locks himself in his room once more, he is down the silver band that once graced a finger on his left hand, and the gold pocket watch's chain.  
  
When he turns away from the door to strip his shirt off, the typewriter is staring at him.  
  
"Oh, shut up," he mutters at it, and snuffs the candle next to his bed.   
  


* * *

  
  
Wat's new lodger misses breakfast, and stumbles down the stairs at a little after noon, looking no worse for the wear, clean, and shaven. Wat is not behind the bar – he refuses to serve before the dusk in the winter time, it keeps his patrons from being rowdy and breaking his chairs. He is sitting in a rocking chair near the open door, cool winter air and sunlight making the fire gut and sputter, and watching the foot traffic outside on the main jaunt to town. It's a Sunday, and the ladies are out in their finery. Church is still in session, Wat knows, and all of his sisters have gone, along with his donation to the collection plate.  
  
His presence, though, still seems to bring his lodger up short. "Er," the man says.  
  
Wat looks up at him, and stops the slow, steady creak of his rocking. "Yes?" he tries. It comes out steady and stern, which he thinks is a good sound for him.  
  
Geoff's stomach rumbles in response.  
  
"You missed breakfast," Wat tells him sternly. He feels bad, just a bit, but with all the man's winnings from the night before, and the fact that the man is rich, there will be no problem for him to go to town and buy something from the general store. Ellen makes excellent pies. No one will go hungry here.  
  
The man opens his mouth, and then closes it. They regard one another, and it makes Wat uncomfortable, and he looks away. "Where is everyone?" he asks.  
  
"Church." Wat nods down the road. Honestly, what kind of city was New York, if it didn't still have churches.  
  
Geoff tilted his head, and then pulls out his watch, snaps it open, snaps it shut. Makes a noise of surprise. "Then why aren't you there?"  
  
"Someone's got to stay and look after this side of town. First year we were here, looters came and went through the whole place while we were all in service." Wat remembers going through torn family photos, and trying not to cry, and his sisters crying anyway, and then trying not to cry even more. "Used to be we took it in turns. Now I do it."  
  
Geoff sits down in a chair, not at the table he was at last night, but like one. "Don't you think God misses you?"  
  
Wat shrugs. "I don't think He'd much mind me trying to protect my sisters."  
  
Something lights in Geoff's face. "The picture in my room – "  
  
"Their idea." Wat waves a hand, and sighs. The girls had taken turns redecorating each room, including his own, with things from home.   
  
"But the picture is…it's…"  
  
Wat cracks his first smile, and looks over at Geoff, who seems to be struggling for a word. "Big."  
  
Geoff makes a motion with his eyebrows and nods in an odd way that indicates Wat's assessment is lacking in emphasis. Wat regards him for a moment, and then stands up, and beckons.   
  
"C'mon," he mutters, and turns, doesn't bother to see if Geoff follows. "I can spare an egg."  
  


* * *

  
  
Geoff spends the rest of the day writing.  
  
He goes to town after supper, to meet with the typesetter, who has received the letter from New York saying that he is to offer Geoff a six-week pennysheet run. His stories are lurid and vulgar and will most likely be banned by the church, the typesetter tells him, and so will be perfect to sell over in California. The typesetter is a large man with a short beard and a kind smile – the kind of smile that will beam down on children. He is good with delicate work with his hands, and, just before he leaves, sends Geoff with a strange basket smelling strongly of tarts to deliver to his landlord.   
  
He also pays Geoff in advance – five dollars for the stories that haven't run yet, and three fifty-cent pieces for the one that's been delivered already, with agreement to recompense upon delivery for the stories, and a bonus if they sell well – and Geoff can hear them clinking in his pocket.   
  
Geoff likes the typesetter immediately.   
  
When he returns to the bar, it is full night, and the poker game he was a part of last night is already in full swing. "Chaucer," the men call to him. "Try your luck again?" One of them dangles his watch chain at him.  
  
He points at them, eyes flashing as he walks to the bar. "Clear that seat for me." They cheer as he turns away, and sets the basket in front of a frowning Wat.  
  
"Money's due," Wat says gruffly, not even looking under the cloth of the basket.   
  
Geoff gives him a dollar, already distracted by the slapping sound of cards being shuffled, and turns away.  
  
"More'n that," Wat says.  
  
Geoff turns to him, and blinks. "Pardon?"  
  
He thinks it might be the manners that make Wat scowl deeper, and the sandy red eyebrows furrow themselves distrustfully. "What I mean is," the bartender says. "If you're going to be staying. It's five dollars for a week, instead of seven, if you want to go that way."   
  
Geoff looks at the coins in his hand, and looks at the table, where the men are cheering at a particular event of amusement and slamming their glasses. He clenches his jaw, and drops three more coins onto the wooden surface – four total, to make five with yesterday's dollar. It leaves him with two and a half to gamble away.  
  
"And another half for your dinner today."  
  
Geoff's head whips around and he knows he's gawping but he can't help it. "Fifty…for an  _egg_? Have you lost your  _mind_?"  
  
Wat's expression is flat, expectant. He holds out his palm.   
  
Geoff groans, drops the coin into it, and trudges upstairs.   
  
He goes to sit in front of the typewriter, and can't manage a thing. The shuffle of cards follows him up the stairs.  
  


* * *

  
  
The next day, Wat feeds the horses in the afternoon. He hasn't seen Geoff all day, but he figures it's alright, because the man's at least given him enough money to let Wat feel alright for dropping at tart off at his door with the clean face towel this morning, although his lodger wasn't there at the time.   
  
He tends to the horses, giving them a thorough currying, which they seem to enjoy. He checks over their tails and hooves for damage, and there's one, a steely brawn brown that nudges its nose over his shoulder nibbling at him, that he likes in particular. He hasn't named them, because they don't need names – he knows them apart, anyway – but he likes this one in particular, because it prefers sugar to apples, and is clearly a sensible sort of horse that way.  
  
Today, though, there is only oats and straw, and a bit of carrot too rotted for soup that the horses seem to take to anyway. Tomorrow there will be barley, and he may have to talk to the typesetter's wife about weaving more blankets for the horses if the frost gets worse. He makes a note in the back of his mind to bring it up, and then notices the sound.  
  
It's hard to mask movement in straw.   
  
"Who's that?" he asks the horse's hind, and the movement that appears startles him – it's higher up than he'd thought, in the loft. He nearly snaps his neck looking up. Geoff peers down at him.  
  
"Problem?" Geoff says cheerily.   
  
Wat scowls up at him. "Get  _down_  here. You could snap something if you fell." Not that he's sure anyone would miss the idiot, but he won't have it on his hands. His sisters would never let him hear the end of it.   
  
There's a rustle, and a slide, and Geoff down by his hands onto a rafter, and then from there onto the ground. It's a degree of agility that Wat has never seen, and it disturbs him. Until he gets a better look at Geoff, and tilts his head, and makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat. "What happened to you, then?" he demands.  
  
Geoff looks down at himself. He's in his shirtsleeves and a vest, buttoned up the front, and his long leather trousers – the only clothes he brought with him, save the jacket. Then he looks back up at Wat expectantly.   
  
Wat gives him a withering expression, stalks forward, grabs him by the upper arm, and yanks him along behind him, out into the yard where the light is better. There's light all along Geoff's temple, and his lip and eye are swollen on the left side. He points viciously.  
  
"Nothing to concern yourself with," Geoff says, with a genuine smile that tells Wat nothing save that the man's sanity if flexible. "It's been sorted."  
  
"It looks like  _you've_  been sorted," Wat snaps at him.  
  
Geoff pulls out of his grasp, and gives a genuine tinkling laugh. "Why on earth do you care?"  
  
Geoff's smile teases him as the man turns away, keeping his eyes on him over his shoulder a moment longer than necessary, and Wat realizes that he doesn't understand why on earth he should.  
  


* * *

  
  
Geoff writes the rest of the afternoon, stops for supper and a cup of strong coffee, and is back up in his rooms before the table he has occupied two nights before becomes filled. The gentlemen who want more than a good beating out of him – want gold they think he has – complain to Wat when he does not return that evening, but Geoff knows nothing of this, because he is up in his room, writing furiously.  
  
He writes all morning, pays no attention to the sunrise, breaks for breakfast, writes for another hour, and collapses, fully dressed, on top of the coverlet.  
  


* * *

  
  
Wat's scowl nearly hurts his face as much as the wood hurts against his fist, but he doesn't stop pounding. It's a few minutes of relentless noise before he hears sounds within, and he manages to pull his fist away before Geoff opens the door.  
  
The man is peering down at him, doing his best to blink, and looks as though he may slump to the ground from exhaustion. "Wat?" he mutters, confused, and Wat refuses to feel the odd coil of anger in his gut at the use of his name. "What's…what time is it?"  
  
"I've received complaints," Wat snaps, trying to keep the matter purely business, because that's all it is. "About you making too much noise at night."  
  
Geoff blinks, and squeezes his body closer into the crack between the door and the room, and Wat's anger boils over, makes him want to shove into the room to see what's lurking inside. What Geoff's been hiding in there for so long – it's Friday, and he's only seen the writer for meals since then, and it's becoming a bit ridiculous, frankly. On the other hand, the bruise around his eye has faded to a yellowish green sickly color, which means it is healing. It also means it hurts quite a bit, and Wat allows himself to be satisfied by this.   
  
"I'll try and – " Geoff says, and then looks confused, and, for a moment, sad. Wat wants to ask him why, but doesn't.  
  
"If you're going to have whores up here," Wat says flatly, "do it quiet-like." Geoff makes a choking sound and grips the door. Wat only pauses a breath before he turns on his heel and storms away.  
  


* * *

  
  
Sunday, Geoff sneaks out early to see the typesetter before he leaves for service, and finds out that the man is unable to attend due to a broken foot.   
  
"It's nothing serious," the typesetter informs him in his gruff, kind voice, as his wife – a skilled seamstress, he is informed, and Geoff makes politely interested sounds at this news – sets a cup of coffee in front of him. Geoff drinks it black, and they speak the rest of the morning about what Geoff has written.  
  
"It's much longer than we agreed on," the typesetter reminds him. Geoff assures him that he knows this.  
  
"It's very popular in Britain right now," Geoff tells him, his fingers pushing on the sectioned off parts. "It's called a serial. You give the part of the story, you see, and then they want to buy the next part to see what happens."  
  
The typesetter thinks it's brilliant, and gives him the rest of the money he's owed. Geoff hesitates a moment before sliding the money back across to him, his mouth in a hard line.   
  
"If you would," he says carefully. "Put it into the Fowlehurst's grocery tab."   
  
The typesetter's wife doesn't say anything, but something in her eyes makes Geoff look at her for a moment, and he knows she understands.  
  
When he returns to the saloon, he steals into the kitchen, grateful that Wat is out somewhere in the barn and doesn't have to see his face. It's red, and he thinks it mightn't be entirely from the cold.  
  
He steals into the kitchen, and grabs two eggs and makes himself some food. Aside from coffee, he can't remember the last time he's had anything proper. He washes the pan and leaves it out deliberately, so that Wat will know.  
  


* * *

  
  
Wat goes into the kitchen that night to find his niece peering at a frying pan, as though there's a mouse inside it and she won't go near.   
  
"What is it?" he asks, genuinely curious, and approaches.   
  
She points to a small, folded, perfect paper flower that sits in the black of the pan. Wat reaches out a careful hand and picks it up. It's nearly as delicate as a real lily, but the edges are sharp. Wat lifts it onto the window sill, and it does not shift, because the windows are perfectly sealed.   
  
"There's two eggs missing," she tells him. "And a bit of bread."  
  
He doesn't say anything, and neither does she, and when he turns to look at her, she's grinning. He doesn't understand why, until he realizes he's grinning, too, and it takes him up short, and he scowls, but it's too late, and she's laughing at him.  
  


* * *

  
  
It's the middle of the day on Tuesday when Geoff hears someone pounding up the stairs, and he looks up from his seat on the bed to see Wat come up short at his door, hand poised to knock. Wat's hand falls uselessly at his side as he sees that the door is open. Geoff sets down his pencil and puts an interested expression on his face.  
  
Wat looks as though he may explode.   
  
"Yes?" Geoff says politely.  
  
"You – " Wat says. "You – " He raises a shaking finger, and squints, and tilts his head, and it's everything Geoff can do not to laugh at him. It doesn't keep a corner of his mouth from twitching.  
  
"I?" he prompts, and uncurls one leg from underneath him. He'd been in town today, and bought two new shirts, and was wearing one. Both white cotton, like the other, but the feeling of something new was brilliant. The typesetter had set him an account at the general store and put his new wages in it.   
  
"Went into town," Wat manages, still spitting mad.  
  
"Yes," Geoff says, surprised. He's been expecting something, but this isn't it. "I did."  
  
"Not you," Wat barks. " _Me._ "  
  
"Ah," Geoff says, the idea beginning to take shape.  
  
"You put money – "  
  
"Yes," Geoff cuts him off. "If you insist on hording my earnings on the pretense of keeping them safe from gambling debts, they may as well go straight into your grocery account."   
  
Wat stares at him, and his mouth opens a little.  
  
Geoff shrugs one shoulder, gracefully.   
  
Wat takes a step in. "You – knew. How…"  
  
"Oh, come now." Geoff waves him off and looks down at his notes again. He picks up his pencil, scratches something out, and adds a word. "Plenty of people have tried to stop me gambling. They've never succeeded yet."  
  
"But you haven't – "  
  
"Been at the tables, no, I know," Geoff murmured, growing increasingly distracted. "Don't gamble when I'm writing."   
  
"Writing." Geoff can hear Wat digest this information, slowly, piece by piece. Then: "But you haven't been writing all this time."   
  
"Found a different game to occupy my time," Geoff murmured to the page, and then scraped another line out with the tip of his pencil and scribbled again. "Higher stakes."  
  
Wat's staring at him. Geoff looks up, and gives him an appraising look, and a sly smile. "Those chaps look good on you," he says innocently.  
  
Wat gapes at him for another moment, his face going suddenly and sharply red, and the man flees down the stairs before Geoff has a chance to say anything else. Geoff keeps his chuckle quiet enough to stay in the room.  
  


* * *

  
  
Wat thinks he's got a pretty good handle on this Geoffrey Chaucer problem a week later.  
  
He's getting his rental fees – three dollars a week, minus the extra two he stashed from Geoff the first time – directly from the typesetter, who asks him to tell Geoff that the cereal idea is brilliant. Wat doesn’t understand why on earth anything would be particularly brilliant about cereal, he likes oatmeal and grits as much as the next, but doesn't see what cereal could have to do with writing. Nevertheless, when he passes the message on to Geoff at an all-house supper, the writer seems pleased.   
  
He spends the day in town, as he does most Tuesdays, purchasing lye and flour and bolts of calico for the girls to make new curtains for the rooms and pillowcases to match. There may be a bit left over for one skirt, if they're careful, and it's all there's been talk of for the past few nights. Wat thinks he may be going insane.  
  
When he asks the butcher for information about Geoff, he knows he is.   
  
The information that he gathers is that Geoff is, all around, an enjoyable person. Trustworthy, funny, a hit with the children. He plays stickball while the parents shop, and he's good at marbles but not so good that he won't end up losing them all at the end of the game. Wat isn't sure that this is entirely goodnatured maturity on the writer's part, giving all the marbles back to the children. He's seen the way the man plays cards.   
  
One young man, in particular, seems to like him – curly, eager, a farmer out on the corners of town. The man is ready to pull up stakes and go join the rush to the West, he thinks there's room for another panner, and he wants his share. Geoff, apparently, has given him advice on where to head – north, further north than most will go – and the boy has promised to bring gold back to the city if he finds it.  
  
Privately, Wat hopes the boy finds his gold, but that he will keep the madness that comes with it far away from their town.  
  
When he returns to the saloon, he brings a lemon, which has just arrived from San Francisco, and a newspaper four days old.   
  
He also brings a copy of Geoff's story to read over.  
  


* * *

  
  
"But it  _stops_  in the middle."  
  
Geoff laughs, not unkindly, and is sharpening his pencil with the switchblade. The silver handle has been replaced by wood and iron, the silver pawned somewhere in California by now. The night had not been a good one, a week and a half ago – more than drunk and taunted out to his old table with the smack of cards, and he'd nearly lost his clothes before Wat had finally – with the help of his shotgun – forced the men out of the saloon.   
  
He wouldn't accept Geoff's thanks, only punched the man in the side of the head. But when Geoff folded him up another flower and gave it to Wat's niece, he did notice that it found its way to the sill with the other, slightly yellowed now by winter sunlight.  
  
Since then, there have been no more card games, but sometimes – nights like this – Geoff needs the feel of the stock in his hands.  
  
"That's the point," he tells Wat. "It means you'll buy the next one. Which you oughtn't, by the way. I'd have given you one, if you'd wanted to read it." The girls have all passed it around more than once, the second part of the serial, and the visiting travelers that seem taken to the activity of reading have already placed orders with the typesetter for the next installment.   
  
"I want to know what happens." Wat is scowling down at the paper, as though it is the fault of the words themselves that they will not rearrange into ones he has not already read. Ones that will continue the story that Geoff has not finished yet.   
  
"So do I," Geoff mutters to his hands, and the cards arc from one palm to another in a flashy bend.  
  
Wat tilts his head at him, the scowl not so much on his mouth anymore as between his eyes. "Why do you like them?"  
  
Geoff regards the question in silence. "Cards? Or the gambling?"  
  
"Gambling," Wat clarifies, and can tell he's about to retract the question as too personal when Geoff answers.  
  
"I used to be very good at it."  
  
Wat snorts at him, his chin in his palm, the paper forgotten. "What happened?"  
  
A sigh works its way out of Geoff, and he resolutely puts the cards down, tapping on them with an index finger. "The trick to poker – to any card game – is keeping a person too distracted to play. I'm good at that. I'm good at talking." Wat makes a noise that Geoff has learned is the closest to sarcasm that the man can make. "Anyway. People catch on, nowadays. They don't appreciate it. Some consider it cheating."   
  
"You ought to get yourself a gun. That's what most people do."  
  
Geoff looks awkward, which is an odd look on him. "I'm not very good with guns. I'm better with words."  
  
"And then they throw you in my hayloft."  
  
"And then they throw me in your hayloft," Geoff adds, as though the idea had been his own. He stands, watches the distracted, considering expression on Wat's face shift from far away to up close as the landlord realizes his tenant is leaving. "I haven't thanked you."  
  
Wat looks wary, but not confused. "What for?"  
  
Geoff smiles at him. "For trying."  
  
Wat is still blinking at him when he leaves the kitchen and its cozy little fire, and the two coffee cups between them. He goes to his room and types the night through, and, as before, collapses on his bed as soon as the sun shows itself.  
  


* * *

  
  
"Honestly," Geoff says, holds up his hands. "I haven't had – "  
  
"I don't care," growls Wat, stalking into the room, slamming the door shut. The sun is just setting, and Geoff woke long enough to come down for dinner, and now is sitting, muzzy eyed, in front of his fire. He looks blurry around the edges, soft in the firelight, and Wat has to remember to keep his anger high. "I don't want to know how you're getting them in here."  
  
"Them  _who_  - " Geoff's voice has a tinge of genuine confusion to it, and he's leaning forward in the chair, his hands spread.   
  
"I give you this room – I save your sorry ass from debtors and – "  
  
"I  _know_  that," Geoff snaps at him. "But why do you think I've had anyone in – "  
  
"And  _prostitutes_ , I can't – it just – but – my  _sisters_  - " Wat doesn't understand how anyone who can respect the women of his household so well could stoop so low. He's seen Geoff attend to his niece after supper in the kitchen, both of them with wet forearms as they douse the tin plates in warm water and set them to dry, or wipe them with clean rags. He's seen the way Geoff will sit for hours and listen to his eldest sister talk about the days back east, holding her yarn for her or helping her mend socks. He's seen the way Geoff will twist his fingers into magic and make paper daisy chains, little matching crowns for all the girls.   
  
"Prosti – " Geoff starts, and he's up out of his chair now. "Your  _sisters?_  You think I’m – with your  _sisters_?"  
  
Wat lunges before he can think. " _You're sleeping with my sisters?_ " he bellows.  
  
Geoff has got his hands around Wat's upper arms, wrestling him away. "No! You idio – NO!"   
  
Wat gets in one good hit upside the head, hard enough to make Geoff yell, and then Geoff hits him back, and Wat hits him  _again_ , and then Geoff hooks a foot behind Wat's and yanks, and his legs are swept out from under him. Wat hits the floor hard, but doesn't hit his head. He groans uncomfortably. "You were the one who said – "  
  
"No,  _you_  were," Geoff says, his voice confused and, for reasons Wat can't fathom, hurt.  
  
"You've had women in here!"  
  
"I haven't!" The fury in Geoff's voice is palpable, and it only makes Wat angrier again, as he shoves himself up to his feet.  
  
He knows Geoff is lying, and that's what upsets him most. "I know you are!" He shouts back, jabbing with a finger as he gets up from his knees. "I've had more than one – at least four – tell me that – and – noises! All night long, they say!" Even remembering the curious winks and nods and smiles of his other tenants make him red with anger again. "You're bringing scarlet women into  _my house_  - "  
  
"I've done no such – " Geoff tries to talk over him.  
  
"I'll have you on your ear before I'll allow – " Wat talks over that.  
  
" _I don't like women!_ " Geoff roars.  
  
Silence falls.   
  
They're both breathing heavily, fists clenched, and Geoff is the one to break away, but it is Wat who speaks first. "You – " he starts. "What?"  
  
Geoff has his hands balled up and is staring out at the night out of his window. "I don't like women," he says, his tone still angry. "I don't like women, I don't like women like that, if wouldn't purchase a prostitute, and even if I did, it would not be a  _female_  prostitute, I don't know how else to say this so that you'll understand it – "  
  
"But – " Wat tries. "The noises – "  
  
"I don't," Geoff says, and turns. He is staring at Wat, and Wat feels something clutch five fingernails into his spine and  _drag_  it's way up. "Like. Women."  
  
Wat blinks, and realization comes crashing down on him. "You – "  
  
Geoff looks at him, his mouth a grim, set line.  
  
"But – " Wat says again.  
  
Geoff's face doesn't change.  
  
" _Men?_ " Wat charges, the word laced with every kind of disbelief he knows.  
  
Again, Wat can see the conscious effort in Geoff's body to not move. He exhales shakily. "Men," he says, and laughs a little. "You like – but – what – it's not – "  
  
"It's not prostitutes, that's what it's not," Geoff tells him, drawing himself together a bit. The anger seems to shake out of him, and his hair is the color of dust in the firelight.   
  
Wat's laugh is a little too close to giddy, and he doesn't know why. They're both moving freely again, and Wat pushes a hand up to his forehead, and turns to look at the fire. Inspired, he looks back to Geoff, and pitches his voice in an almost apologetic tone. "But the noises – "  
  
Geoff points at the typewriter.   
  
Wat frowns at him, and shaeks his head, confused.  
  
Geoff sighs, and bends over the machine, sets his fingers onto the buttons, and presses in a rapid flurry that Wat doesn't understand. A clatter fills the room. It's  _loud_.  
  
It takes a moment for Wat to apologize, but he does. "I'm sorry," he says after the keys fall silent. "I am."   
  
Geoff is grinning at him, though, and leaning up against the desk with his arms crossed over his chest. There's something different in his eyes, something that makes Wat take a step backwards. As though something has passed between them here other than humiliation. Wat grasps through the conversation to try and figure out what that might have been, but all he can think about is the shouting, and how he's made an idiot of himself. Hating the taste of apology between them, he leaves as quickly after that as he can.  
  


* * *

  
  
It's another two nights before Wat comes to Geoff.  
  
Geoff is sitting at his window, watching the first odd snow sweep across the plains, and the way the train has been delayed for the night. It sits like a hulking beast outside of the saloon, and it sends chills of apprehension down Geoff's back, but he isn't entirely sure why.  
  
And then, without knocking, Wat is standing next to him. He turns to look, and the door is closed between them and the outside world.  
  
Geoff decides he likes that thought rather a lot.  
  
Wat is looking down at him, and Geoff takes a moment to trace a spiral on the frost on the glass in the window.   
  
"I'm the game," Wat says evenly. Geoff knows that Wat will have figured this out some time ago, or he would have had to deal with a raging Wat, angry at being made fun of in some way. This is not the case, nor will it ever be, but Geoff doubts he would have been able to explain that adequately, so it's best that Wat came to the conclusions on his own before approaching Geoff at all.   
  
Geoff nods, and looks up at him, and moves his feet on the bed. Wat sits down, and they both lean against the chilly sill. After a moment, Wat reaches a tentative hand for Geoff's long shin and pulls first one, and then the other, leg over his lap.  
  
"I'm high stakes," Wat says, and this time it sounds like he's just trying out how it sounds.  
  
"The highest," Geoff confirms, but it doesn't come out half as seriously as he'd meant it to. It's true either way.  
  
Wat seems to be considering something, and a flicker of consternation crosses his face, and Geoff wants to know what in the world is going on in that head of his and then suddenly he knows, because he's being kissed. It's awkward and poorly angled and he has to tip their heads, readjust their noses, but their mouths brush closer and they kiss, shallow and dry and then a bit deeper and it's nice, Geoff thinks. It's a good kiss.  
  
The fact that it's Wat makes him want to shove his hand down the other man's pants, grab, and pull him up close to him that way.  
  
The fact that it's Wat is why he won't.   
  
The kiss ends, it's really only a fleeting second long or it would've been more than one kiss, really, a massive melting drove of kisses and wonderful tastes and snow and dust and frozen winter sunlight. Geoff pulls back, props himself on his hands behind him, and watches Wat carefully, under the hood of his eyes. Wat is considering again.   
  
"It wasn't bad," Wat says.  
  
Geoff laughs. "Thank you. No, it wasn't."  
  
A flush blossoms on Wat's neck, and Geoff wants to taste it. So he does. Wat makes a strangled, surprised sound. The flush spreads, and Geoff breathes him in. Wat's voice is very low, and very close to his ear. "I've never," Wat says.  
  
Geoff eases back only far enough to look him in the eye, both of their faces gravely serious. Though Wat, for some reason unbeknownst to him, looks incredibly worried. Like he's about to cover his face with his hands until Geoff concedes, "Neither have I."  
  
Wat blinks at him. "With a – man, I mean."  
  
"Neither have I." Geoff nods.  
  
The voice is down to a harsh whisper when Wat speaks again, and they're somehow easing closer, legs tangling, shoulders pressed close. "Then how do you – know – "  
  
Geoff kisses him again, slowly, letting their eyes drift shut, letting the slickness of his mouth rub against Wat's, letting tongue and teeth be introduced at pace, letting the heat stoke itself carefully in his chest until he knows that he is breathing as heavily through his nose as Wat is. Only then does he pull away, and Wat barely allows it. "It feels good," he replies, and he can tell by the look on Wat's face that it takes a moment for him to remember what the question was. "You feel good," he qualifies, and Wat's expression turns confounded.  
  
"I…?"   
  
Geoff presses closer again, between Wat's legs, and leans forward until they are chest to chest, and kisses him. He lets his legs curl up around Wat's, under the arch of his knees, and they are splayed in the oddest of ways on the uncomfortable mattress. He takes Wat's hand, which doesn't seem to know what to do with itself, as it is ranging rather wildly, and kisses the palm. "You feel good," Geoff says quietly, thankful that the door is already closed, and places the palm of Wat's hand over his groin. He feels hot even to his own brief touch, and can't imagine how odd it must feel for What, who tries to jerk his hand away. The sudden movement makes Geoff hiss, an clamp down hard on the wrist, and Wat's eyes go wide. "You feel good to me," Geoff says, his eyes half lidded, and Wat – Wat – squeezes.   
  
Geoff groans into Wat's neck, and leaves the hand be, pulling his own away from Wat's wrist to press up against Wat's flies as well. He swallows Wat in another heady kiss, this one deep and wet and good and Wat is pushing into him, into his mouth and his hand and he really, really has far too nice of a tongue for someone who has no idea what they're doing. Geoff, at least nimble with his fingers at the worst of times, makes quick work of Wat's flies, and pulls him out.   
  
Wat is rubbing him now, bottom to top, tracing the shape of him through his pants with an insistent hand, and between that and the sight of Wat's flushed and silky cock in his palm, Geoff loses his breath more than a little. He dives back in for a kiss, pending Wat's head back onto the window sill, and knows this must be awful on the other man's back but his hips, his erection, his mouth, none of that cares about how Wat's back feels. And Wat doesn't seem to care either, from the way he's groaning and thrusting up into his hand. Geoff gathers him together in his palm, fingers brushing the balls still trapped inside the trousers, and then frowns, and breaks his mouth away, panting.  
  
He drops little wet kisses all over Wat's face – Wat, who is heaving for breath, his eyes unfocused, and tries to reach up his free hand to grab at Geoff's hair to haul him back down. His other hand smoothes its heel over Geoff's sensitive groin, and those two things combined almost make him lose his goal, but after a bit of a whimper he manages to try again.  
  
"Wait," he pants against Wat's cheek, and Wat makes a disapproving noise and squeezes him again, and this time the noise is from Geoff. "Just – ah! God, oh, W… Just…" He clamps his eyes shut, ruts his hips forward, and then knows there is going to be no stopping, just doing simultaneously, and he'll have to find the brainpower for that if he wants what he wants. So instead of asking for Wat's help – Wat is no help at all, licking and nipping along his jaw, stroking his cock through his pants with those sinful calloused fingers – he pulls back far enough, reaches his own hand at an awkward angle over Wat's head, and wets his palm with two fast, wet stripes of his tongue, and then reaches for Wat's cock again.   
  
It's better this time, and Geoff would've known that even if it isn't for the clunk of Wat's head against the window as it drops back, or the surprised "Oh!" that leaves him, or the way his hips thrust up into Geoff's hand. Geoff works himself up onto his knees and back on his haunches, so that he isn't any higher than Wat but he's between the man's legs, and can rock harder into his palm. It feels so good like this, and it's been so long since he's had anything other than his own fingers or the mattress in the morning, and Wat knows what he's doing even if he thinks he doesn't. Their mouths collide again, devouring Wat's hungry noises, and Geoff speeds his hand, pulling back Wat's foreskin with a deft twist and tapping at the slit with his index finger, drawing moisture and shaking sobs from Wat. The moisture he swirls down, in little spirals, further down as he can collect more, and it isn't long before Wat is shaking apart in his hands.  
  
Wat rips his mouth free, and their face are buried in necks because it's too much work to try to lift heads, and Wat has a deathgrip on his hair at the back of his head and Geoff knows it'll be a miracle if he doesn't lose at least a handful by the end of this. His hips are pushing so hard into Wat's palm that he thinks he may have leaked through the leather, but surely it's just the damp moist feeling of his own groin, and knows it should be uncomfortable but, strangely, it isn't. Geoff resorts to long, steady, fast pulls on Wat's cock and breathes heavily into his ear, pours sweet nothings and nonsensical ramble about his eyes, his beauty, the things Geoff sees in him, into his ear as they both peel further and further way from reality.   
  
It's actually Geoff who comes first, one, two, four, seven more sharp thrusts and he is clamping his teeth down into the soft skin that connect Wat's throat to his shoulder. It's that that makes Wat spurt over his hand, the warm wet flood that spills between them and onto his stomach where they're pressed so close and his shirt has ridden up a little.   
  
Geoff is still twitching in his pants when Wat's eyes open, and Geoff strokes him carefully, cautious of discomfort from the oversensitivity, but works on rubbing the ejaculate into Wat's skin, and into his own hand and stomach. It feels lovely, silky, slick and wrong, and Wat isn't stopping him. Wat is kissing him again, and thumbs his cock through his trousers. "Should I – " Wat starts, and his voice is so gravelly that he has to stop and clear his throat.  
  
But Geoff is shaking his head anyway, laughing in disbelief and kissing Wat, kissing him again and then a third time. "Did."  
  
Wat pulls back and looks at him in the eye. "What? In your – " He blushes, and his eyes dart down to Geoff's crotch, and then he presses his full palm against him, and he can see that Wat is working out that it feels different, slightly, as he softens from his orgasm. Wat looks up at him, annoyed, and Geoff is overcome by a flicker of horror that this is wrong, what they've done, and that Wat will kick him out.  
  
"Wait for me to do it for you," Wat scolds him, "next time."  
  
The relief is palpable in Geoff's laugh, and he buries his face into Wat's neck and licks the wound he's left there, and they press closer together, melting, until Wat winces from the angle on his back and neck.   
  
They rearrange themselves as best they can, Wat helping to peel off Geoff's sticky trousers, wrinkling his nose, and Geoff fetching the pitcher and the face cloth and cleaning them both, gently, so thoroughly that Wat is half-hard by the time he's finished with both of them.   
  
He presses up against Wat's side, and sticks his nose in the man's neck, and kisses him again there, just where the jaw turns into the throat. "I'm sorry, I – I used to be – longer – " Geoff tries. "Longer than that, anyway."  
  
"So did I," Wat says, ruefully. "Though I reckon that might be that I wasn't so interested with the girls."  
  
Geoff blinks. He's never thought about it that way. Then he grins. "But you're interested with me?"  
  
Wat makes a happy sound and turns, and their cocks are brushing against thigh and belly and Geoff thinks he might be ready to see how a proper, longer-than-that round would hold them. But first Wat is nuzzling into him, and arms are being worked around shoulders and heads onto chests and legs between legs until they're a massive tangle of warm, even on top of the covers.   
  
There's silence for a moment, with Wat lazily exploring the skin of his collarbone, and Geoff stroking at Wat's hairline, and it's so comfortable that Geoff doesn't understand how it didn't happen before. And then Wat murmurs to him, and the fire pops and a log shifts. "Were the stakes high?"  
  
Geoff feels a thrill in his chest, and he grins, and gives Wat a squeeze around his middle, and kisses him. "They were," he whispers back, their shadows long in the winter night. "But I won the house."


	2. Chapter 2

Geoff wakes alone, but thinks nothing of it. Living in a saloon means there is always plenty to be going on, and it's not the first time he's woken to find Wat dealing with some ridiculous problem downstairs, milk payments or a stubborn horse or some wild animal having gotten into the smokeshed. So he gets up, relieves himself, manages to find his trousers from where he dumped them last night on his way to collapsing next to Wat, and pulls out the small chink of glass and the straight razor.   
  
He washes his face and leaves it wet, and works up a good lather with a brush on the soap in the mug. He's half done by the time Wat returns, and he swipes at his neck with a few more steady strokes and finishes the job before he realizes what Wat's brought.   
  
"Thought it might be useful," Wat offers, and sets down the steaming pot of hot water. Geoff beams at him, and dips a corner of the towel in, and wipes away the rest of the lather with hot water, feeling immensely better for it. Wat tuts at him when he misses a spot, and pulls the towel out of his hand to wipe. Then he turns away from Geoff and grabs up the lather brush, swirling the soap into a high foam.   
  
Geoff removes it from his hands with a tsking sound and drags over the spindly chair, leaning its back against the drysink next to the basin and pitcher. "Sit," he tells Wat, and after a moment, the man does. Geoff leans down to kiss him, his smooth face brushing against Wat's rough one – it's been days since Wat's shaved, and it feels brilliant in bed, sometimes, raspy and delicious – and pushes his head back onto the sink. "Stay," he says, not a command, but a request.  
  
Wat stays, and Geoff gathers the towel and drops it into the pot of steaming water. When it's good and wet, he wrenches it out and piles it carefully onto Wat's face. He cleans the razor, then, and refluffs the soap, and admires Wat. His fingers flick open the first few buttons on his shirt and arrange the collar so that he'll be able to get a closer shave on Wat's neck, dips the brush into the soap, and starts applying it to Wat's left cheek.   
  
"Tickles," Wat complains, but doesn't move.   
  
Once his face is full lathered, Geoff straddles him face first, and settles down on his thighs. Wat spreads his legs to balance them out a bit, and hooks his hands onto the arms of the chair. "Comfortable?" Geoff teases him, but doesn't give him a chance to answer, just tips his head to the side with one steady hand and draws the blade down his cheek.  
  
The razor is so sharp that Wat can't actually feel it, but he can hear the metal-on-flesh sound that it makes, and the quiet, rhythmic tapping of the blade into the pitcher, cleaning it, and then back into the hot water, to wet it again. Stripe by stripe, Wat's face is revealed. "You look good like this," Geoff tells him, tilting his head back to get at his chin.   
  
Wat makes a rumbling sound of disbelief, and Geoff laughs a quiet, agreeable laugh. "Well, you can't tell me I'm an idiot when you have to keep your mouth shut, anyway." Geoff wipes the blade, runs it down his throat again, and clears more of the lather away. He purses his lips, and then bends over the knife, back to where Wat's head is resting on the sink. He kisses the freshly shaved patch of skin just by his ear, and smiles against his skin at the smoothness. "Missed you, waking up," he rumbles against Wat's cheek, and Wat starts against him but doesn't move overmuch, not with the blade so perilously close to his throat.   
  
Geoff pulls back and continues, humming a bit to himself, as though none of it had happened.   
  
Wat seems to be struggling with something, so Geoff eases off, and takes an overlong amount of time cleaning the blade, swishing it too and fro in the pitcher, hearing the metallic clink within as he accidentally brushes the sides too sharply. "Why?" Wat manages eventually, but it's his tone of genuine confusion that makes Geoff look back at him.  
  
"Why," Geoff muses, and then tilts Wat's head away from him, revealing the still-lathered cheek. He shaves one stripe, slowly, carefully. "Because waking up with someone is nice. Sometimes the nicest part of all." A succession of quick little strokes under Wat's nose, and he has to clean the razor again. The water's not so boiling hot anymore, but it's still more than warm, and it feels good against Geoff's knuckles.  
  
"I've heard people," Wat says, and he sounds odd again, and he isn't looking at Geoff, which makes Geoff pause and squint, and then go to work on his cheek again, carefully, so that Wat can talk. "They say waking up like that, another person clinging on you." He stops, and Geoff stops, and frowns down at him. Wat darts a glance to him and then away, his forehead creasing because he can't scowl without getting himself cut. "They say it's annoying. The…clinging."  
  
Geoff is the one, this time, who makes the noise of disbelief. "Those people are idiots," he decides, and takes the final bit of lather off of Wat's cheek with the blade. He lets the razor clink into the water, and picks up a towel to rub over Wat's face until it's slightly pink and smooth everywhere. Wat's looking at him now, and Geoff drops the towel, and pulls the blade out, dries it, and closes it with a snap, sets it on the sink next to Wat's head. Then he leans forward until they're chest against chest, and rubs his nose over Wat's cheek. "I like it," he tells Wat. "You ought to try it, decide for yourself."  
  
He kisses Wat's cheek, tastes shaving soap and water but mostly Wat, clean and smooth, and decides it's so nice that he kisses Wat again, on the mouth. He looks up and grins, and Wat blinks up at him, and dives up for a kiss.   
  
It makes Geoff start and he knocks the sink, and the pitcher clatters against the pot of warm water, and neither of them care, because suddenly Wat is ripping Geoff's shirt off – he's not sure how it's managed without disengaging from the kiss, but they must've, at some point, because then it's over his head and on the floor – and Geoff is scrabbling at Wat's buttons, at the canvas pants that he must've slipped on as he stole away in the early dawn, out of Geoff's warm bed, to tend to the saloon. Geoff revenges the absence on those pants, tearing them open and Wat is bucking them both up, Geoff's legs participating only after he understands what's happening, and they work Wat's trousers far enough down for Geoff to be able to go right for his cock, hard and warm in his hands.   
  
It's still so new, and Geoff's brain is a haze of how well they fit, how nice Wat feels against him, touching him, how perfect his hands are down his back and over his stomach and kneading over his own crotch. And still they're kissing, as Geoff strokes Wat in slow, lazy pulls that don't at all reflect the nervous buzzing in his chest or the way he wants to just thrust and thrust against Wat's hands. They tried this, the night before, after a bit of sleep, and Geoff was so pleased just to be touched, just to have hands on him, that waking up without Wat had been near shattering.   
  
Wat, it seems, is doing his best to make up for it.   
  
Trousers crumpled at midthigh, and not willing to let Geoff come in his pants again (something which, frankly, Geoff really probably wouldn't have minded at this point), Wat's hands go roaming, dipping under waistband and cloth down into warm skin, clutching at Geoff's behind, sliding them closer together until they crushed groin to groin, and Geoff's groan slips out around their mouths.   
  
Geoff lets go of Wat's erection, and grapples with his own flies, hissing at the contact of his own fingers, even through so many layers. He gets himself free and shoves forward, and they're skin to skin and Wat's moaning now, as well, and raising his hips up to meet him. Geoff gets his hands out of the way and lets their bodies do the work, puts both palms on Wat's smooth face and kisses him, hard.   
  
It's a mutual decision, because it wouldn't have worked any other way – Wat wouldn't have had the leverage to shove both of them up out of the chair, and yet, somehow, Geoff is stumbling backwards and his back hits the mattress and Wat's still there, right on top of him, pressed against him, and Wat rips his trousers off, shoves Geoff's down over the curve of his ass, and Geoff is still kissing him and smelling soap. He licks Wat's cheek, smooth and slick under his tongue, and Wat shivers against him so he does it again, and again, until it's a bit lascivious but it feels so good.   
  
"I want," Wat husks into his ear, and it makes something boil up and spill in Geoff's stomach, because that's it, that's what all this means, he  _wants_ , and Wat's the one who finds the words for it.   
  
Geoff bites down a little too hard on Wat's jaw and pants against his skin, rocking them together again until Wat cries out. "Let me see you," he asks, wants to touch Wat while Wat touches him, wants to watch him come completely apart under his hands.   
  
Wat groans and grips Geoff's shoulder, pushes him back a little so he can breathe, or find his bearings, or something, Geoff doesn't care. He takes a moment to work Geoff completely free of his pants, and then, in what Geoff thinks is a rather inspired move, Wat grips his own cock and thrusts into his fist. Geoff mirrors him, both of them toppled sideways on the mattress, touching themselves, watching hands and skin and kissing and then tearing away to watch again. Geoff touches where he can, the little dip of stomach that's completely flat right before Wat's pubic hair starts, the planes of his chest, flat, broad strokes over his neck and torso.   
  
He can feel Wat speeding, and nips at Wat's mouth and they're kissing again, and Geoff decides – just then, he decides – that he doesn't ever, ever want to stop kissing Wat, even if they never figure out anything more than this. It's too nice, it feels too good, and he clutches at his own erection as his hips snap back and forth.   
  
Wat spends himself between them, his come slicking along Geoff's cock in a sudden rush of wet, and Geoff is so startled by the unexpected dampness that he moans, and Wat is shuddering against him, working himself down, so carefully. Geoff humps into his tight fist, so close, and orgasms when Wat's startled eyes find his, and it's all he can do not to get lost in the odd grey-blue eyes that watch him.  
  
Wat's the one who cleans them up this time, and Geoff slowly reattaches his bones to his muscles to his brain. Wat tucks in under his arm, smooth cheek against smooth cheek, and kisses his neck.   
  
The fireplace makes it warm enough for a nap, though he knows he'll wake up in fifteen, twenty minutes to pull a blanket over both of them. Or Wat will, and then they'll be cozy enough for the rest of the morning. Geoff's pretty sure he could sleep like this forever, Wat's heartbeat stuttering and slowing against his own, the smell of sex and soap drifting away through the floo.   
  
"Stay, this time," Geoff asks, his eyes closed and his nose against Wat's cheek. Wat doesn't answer, but he tightens his grip just a little.  
  


* * *

  
  
When Wat wakes up, it's to Beatrice sneaking out of the room with the pot in hand. He makes a noise, and she looks back at him, startled, and then smiles. She gives him a kind smile and shrugs toward the pot – as though there were nothing more unusual here than her needing it to boil some potatoes in – and something in Wat unbends a little, that she has nothing more to say than that.  
  
She closes the door securely behind her, and Wat's glad that he's lying on top of Geoff enough to cover them both, and somehow there's a blanket on top of them, and he wonders if it's one of them who put it there or – at this he flushes – Beatrice's doing.   
  
He doesn't have time to get too embarrassed, though, as Geoff's waking up, tightening his arms around him and then loosing, in intervals. It's nice, almost, more than nice, to have someone touching him all over in just the most casual of ways.   
  
He won't admit it, but Geoff was right – the others were idiots.  
  
"Hello," Geoff says, his delight creeping through his sleep-rusted voice.   
  
Wat doesn't say anything, just kisses him on the neck, and slides off his side, lets the arm slung over Geoff's side pool in the middle of his chest. Geoff grabs at it, smiles.  
  
"Wednesday," Geoff says, and it takes Wat a moment to sort out that he means the day.   
  
"Is," Wat confirms, and wonders if he might make buckwheat pancakes for breakfast, or if it's closer to lunch by now.  
  
"Rent's due for the week," Geoff says in that same careless voice, except those five words make every single muscle in Wat's body freeze up.   
  
He's up on one elbow before he realizes it, staring at Geoff's startled and comprehending face, and yanks his hand out of the other man's. "If – "  
  
"No," Geoff cuts him off, rolling up onto his side so they're face to face, and takes Wat's hand back forcibly. "Absolutely not, no, you let me talk before you get yourself into trouble." He gives Wat's hand a squeeze, and it feels like he's squeezing on Wat's stomach, and Wat doesn't like it. He tries to pull away again, and Geoff holds on. So Wat hits him in the side, which looks, by the way Geoff's face contorts, like it probably hurt rather a lot. "You son of a…" And then Geoff is laughing, and shaking his head, and that alone makes Wat angry enough to shake.   
  
"Listen," Geoff says forcefully. "You're not allowed to say I'm not to pay rent anymore, because that makes this," and here he motions between them with their joined hands, "something wrong. And it's not something wrong, it's something right. And I don't mention it because I want you to say something like that, I mention it because I won't be paying this week." He pauses, and watches Wat, who has, by all accounts, stilled. "Okay?" Geoff tries.  
  
Wat's squinting at him, his brain racing, but he isn't trying to get away anymore. "Okay," he says cautiously. "But," he adds, before Geoff can relax. "If you're not paying this week, and you don't expect me to – "  
  
"I'm taking a trip," Geoff tells him, and something drops out of Wat's stomach. It's like being ill, but not. Different.   
  
"Where?" Wat demands, frowning.  
  
Geoff drops down off of his elbow, as though that alone exhausted him. He doesn't pull Wat down with him, so Wat considers it and, after a moment, follows, settling onto Geoff's chest. He's still frowning, though, his forehead creased underneath the flop of his hair. "California," he admits. "I have to take the noon train. I hadn't planned…" He touches Wat's smooth cheek with just the tips of his fingers, and smiles, a little sadly, and Wat thinks that if the feeling in his stomach could look like something on a face, that would be it.   
  
"So don't go," Wat tells him. It makes perfect sense. Wat doesn't want him to go, and he's pretty sure Geoff doesn't want to go, so there's no reason for anyone to be going anywhere.   
  
"I have to," Geoff says. "To tell them I'm not moving there permanently. I'll wrap up my business and set up a contract with my publisher, and then I'll come home."  
  
It doesn't sound so bad, like that. "How long?" Wat wants to know.  
  
Geoff calculates. "A month. Maybe two."  
  
"Two months!" Wat's pushing up off the bed again, to look him in the eye, canny. "No. What if you start gambling again? Or – no." The or finishes as something like 'or decide this is stupid', which is why he doesn't say it out loud – because he  _knows_  this is stupid, he just doesn't want Geoff to cotton on.   
  
"Not likely," Geoff admits. "I'm having all my money wired to you."  
  
Wat opens and closes his mouth a few times, and then hits Geoff again.  
  
"Ow! You little shit." He's laughing, though, rubbing his side, and he gives Wat's hair a yank. They look at each other, and Wat thinks that Geoff looks like he wants to kiss him, but doesn't, and Wat can't imagine why not. "So," Geoff says, sobered. "A verdict on waking up with someone?"  
  
Wat blinks at him, and then scowls. "Well it was nice, until you had to go and be an idiot."  
  
Geoff's laugh sounds again, and this time he does kiss Wat, and uses the upward momentum to push them both upright. "I have to go buy a train ticket," he says apologetically, and reaches for his trousers. Wat wants to trace his spine, down to where his legs split, but doesn't. There's the saloon to tend to, and, apparently, Geoff's funds to manage.   
  
It starts to snow just after midmorning, and the train is delayed, but Geoff leaves anyway.  
  


* * *

  
  
In the end, it isn't two months.   
  
It's three.  
  
New Mexico doesn't have a proper rainy season, but Geoff thinks it's appropriate that the storm follows him east on the train the entire long, disgusting journey back. It's crowded and horrible, people beginning to wend their way home after the initial rush toward the gold of California, and Geoff is not alone in his exhaustion and his disappointment. The letters have been sparse, but it's mostly because Geoff has no permanent address, and it's hard to get mail that way. He writes a letter every Monday, and it makes him feel better, at least, even if he doesn't know if Wat's gotten them.  
  
When he gets off the midnight train – finally, at last, and he isn't sure when his mind started calling New Mexico home, but it did, and now he's back and it feels glorious. Standing in the rain, the hard, dusty leather of his typewriter case getting spattered with rain above and mud below, the water slicing down into his collar, the duster keeping him mostly dry, he heads immediately for the saloon and boarding house.  
  
Wat isn't waiting at the door, but Geoff's eyes go up automatically, and he does see someone waiting behind the lace curtains, the glint of a gun in the early moonlight.   
  
Cecily's at the door, arms crossed, looking less than pleased. Geoff stops in front of her, and they regard one another. The silence stretches inappropriately.  
  
"Been waiting every day to do this, haven't you," Geoff says, tired.  
  
Something in Cecily's face softens immediately, and she puts an arm around him and ushers him inside. "You," she tells him, "are a horrible, horrible man."  
  
"I know," Geoff says heavily.   
  
"If not for those letters," Cecily warns, stripping him of his coat. The men at the bar look at him, but Geoff doesn't recognize any of them, so he ignores them. It's late, and the place is nearly empty. Someone Geoff doesn't know, probably Cecily's husband, is shooing people out the door.   
  
"I know," Geoff says again, but it's a lie. He hadn't known, it had been a breath-holding guess, that the letters would do more good than harm. It's terrifying that he was right, but it's also comforting, in some ways.   
  
"He's over in the kitchen," Cecily tells him. "And he doesn't know you're here, and he – he stopped looking for you, it – " she cuts off, and bites her lip, and Geoff massages his eyes.   
  
"I know," he says again, and nods, and pats her on the shoulder. "Thank you. I know."   
  
He leaves Cecily and her husband downstairs and takes the small doorway next to the bar, through to the kitchen. It's empty and dark, and there's a candle next to the fire, where the embers are banked low over a hanging cast iron tea kettle. The kitchen is a few feet lower than the bar itself, a few steps down, and Geoff thinks it's to keep things cool in the summer. It doesn't help much during the winter, but now that it's getting warmer, perhaps Geoff will see the benefits.  
  
Assuming Wat doesn't kill him, first.  
  
The trip had been ill timed, that was sure. But Geoff was certain he'd be able to keep his business down to four weeks – maybe even three. It would give Wat a chance to figure out whether or not this was a horrible idea, this thing they had started, and he would come back and have Wat's decision, and adjust his life accordingly. But things had gone ill in California, no one had wanted to hear that Geoff didn't want to stay, and what choice did he have but to stay until everything was wrapped up.   
  
In the middle of the room, in front of the fire, is a large metal laundry basin. It's filled with water, and there's a chair next to it with a bar of whitish looking soap and a rag, and a towel, and a pitcher. There's a figure hunched in the tub, leaning forward over its knees, and it doesn't take Geoff an awful lot to figure out who it is.   
  
He comes in the kitchen, and rolls up his sleeves, and approaches the tub carefully. "Cecily's married," he says quietly.  
  
Wat doesn't move, or startle in the least, so Geoff knows he's known Geoff was there for a few moments, at least. Wat also doesn't say anything, though.   
  
Geoff picks up the rag and dips it into the water – it's still hot, and the fire is helping it retain its heat, but it won't stay that way for long. "If I'd wanted someone else to greet me, it wouldn't have been someone married." He squeezes the rag out over Wat's back, and the black water ripples and bends around his stomach as the drops fall back down.   
  
Wat still doesn't say anything, just grunts at him. Geoff takes this as invitation to get the bar of soap, and smoothes it down Wat's back, and he cleans the other man in silence, forearms wet, penance for his tardiness.   
  
"I missed you," he tells Wat's back, rinsing the soap away. "I thought about you every day." He dipps the rag in the water again, and lets it settle to the bottom there, and spreads both of his hands onto Wat's back, damp palms to wet shoulder blades. "I missed you," he says again.  
  
Wat pushes back into his hands and Geoff lets them slide up to his shoulders, until Wat's looking up at him, face pale in the moonlight. "I thought you'd gone," Wat says.  
  
"I won't do it again," Geoff says. "I'm sorry."  
  
"You'd better be."  
  
"I am. Very." The rain stays steady outside, but Wat gripps the sides of the tub, ready to haul himself out. Geoff doesn't move his hands off of Wat's shoulders, and the man looks up at him curiously. Geoff wets his lips, puts his damp hands to Wat's chin, and kisses him. Wat blinks up at him, and Geoff licks his lips again, tastes water. "What," Geoff says quietly. "Did you think I'd forgotten how?"  
  
"You sound tired," Wat says instead of responding, grabbing the towel. Geoff releases him and stands back, pressing on his lower back to pop the kinks out.   
  
"I  _am_  tired," Geoff says, and finally hears his own voice – he does sound tired. "Bed?" he says hopefully.   
  
Wat stands, and resolutely doesn't look at Geoff as he ties the towel around his waist. "All the rooms are full."  
  
Geoff blinks. "What?"  
  
Wat looks at him apologetically, but Geoff still extends a hand to help him down out of the basin. The water slops after him, a bit, and spatters on the floor. "This weather, more people have been renting. It's harder to sleep on the ground when the ground is mud."  
  
"Oh," Geoff says, and sighs quietly, and squints, looking at the wall as if it might hold an answer to this predicament.   
  
Wat swats his arm. "Come on." He picks up the candle on the hearth and walks out.  
  
Geoff is too tired to ask where they're going, though he'll take the bench near the door, if he has to. It'll probably fit him if he lays sideways, and he's tired enough that he'll fall right to sleep anyway. Geoff can't sleep on trains – he doesn't understand how anyone can. After four days of travel and only a few hours of sleep, Geoff is ready to cozy down right there in the kitchen.  
  
They go up to the second floor, past all the tenant rooms, and to an empty spot on the wall. Wat reaches up, clutching at the towel with one hand, and pulls down a cord. A ladder comes down out of the ceiling. Geoff, stunned, obeys when he is gestured to go first. He doesn't even miss the opportunity to look up Wat's towel, he's so curious to see what's lying at the other end of the ladder.   
  
The light from Wat's candle follows them up in jerky steps, as Wat ascends behind him, and he sets the candle on the floor to pull the ladder and the hatch up closed behind him. Geoff has to stoop on one side of the room so as not to hit his head, and sees only a narrow hallway. On one end, stretching the length of the house, is a wall with a door cut into it. On the other side, there is another wall, and another door. So far down the length of the house already, Geoff has to note how small one of the rooms must be, compared to the others.   
  
"This way," Wat tells him, and tugs him toward the door of the smaller room. They get inside and it is, indeed, tiny, and not just because the bigger bed makes it look so. Smaller than all the lodger's rooms, but definitely lived in – a small collection of trinkets and photos and clothing spilled everywhere. There's a lamp with a lampshade and Wat lights it from the candle, and draws the nicely embroidered curtains on the window. It takes Geoff a moment, but he realizes that whoever waits and watches each train arrival must be on this level – not in this room, the positioning is wrong, but on this level.   
  
Wat plops onto his bed and reaches for a pair of cotton pants, slips them on, and Geoff very carefully examines the walls while he does. There are newspaper clippings tacked next to the mirror, a tiny stove to heat the place in the winter, no fireplace. A gorgeously embroidered quilt is folded at the foot of the bed, with spring scenes on it. Geoff wonders if he has one for every season, and decides he'd like to find out.  
  
On the dresser, under the mirror, lays a collection of Geoff's completed serial story. It is tattered and, upon seeing Geoff examining it, Wat clears his throat.   
  
"Your room," Geoff says.  
  
"My sisters are next door," Wat says, and Geoff wonders, for a moment, if this is to warn Geoff away from the sisters, or away from Wat.   
  
"I'd wondered," Geoff admits. The answer is much simpler than he's ever allowed himself to imagine. "It's very…warm," he says, leaning against the dresser and spreading his hands. "It's loved in."  
  
Wat snorts at him, and pulls one leg up underneath the other, watching him. "I thought you were tired."   
  
Geoff grins at him. "That's never kept me from talking before."  
  
"It ought to," Wat grumbles, and nods at the other side of the bed.  
  
Geoff doesn't require any further invitation to pull his shirt over his head and go to work on his shoes. Stripped to the waist, he goes for the bed. Kneels on it and is about to sprawl face-down in the pillows when Wat stops him, looking annoyed. "What?" Geoff says, puzzled and sleepy and cold. The rain is still falling outside the window, but it feels more distant now. Everything does.  
  
Wat makes a frustrated sound and tugs the buttons open on Geoff's pants. "You just have to be difficult, don't you."   
  
A delighted, happy laugh comes out of Geoff and he helps pull off the leather pants, the pants he won't sacrifice even when the editors tell him it makes him look like a bandit or a rancher. Those are chaps, he tells them, and very different, and he will not wear the ridiculous linen or cotton suits that they offer to purchase for him.   
  
It takes a bit of adjusting, but they end up under the covers with Geoff's back to the wall, both of them facing the door, Geoff pillowed on one arm and Wat's head tucked just under his own. They lay in the dark for a moment, Geoff naked but warm, until Wat reaches back for his arm and pulls it over his side. Geoff pulls him closer until they fit together, back to front, and Geoff rubs a thumb down Wat's stomach.   
  
"Thank you," he says quietly, even though he wants to say 'I'm sorry' again.   
  
"Shut up," Wat tells him, a sleepy mumble in the darkness.  
  


* * *

  
  
Geoff's solution to the bedding problem is presented the next day. He tells Alice to start on a mattress, and disappears for a few hours. When he comes home, the sun is directly overhead, and he's got enough bushels of fleece to stuff a bed. When Wat asks him where he got them, Geoff simply smiles at him, kisses him, and gives him a pound of sugar for the larder.   
  
Wat contemplates telling him he doesn't appreciate being treated like a housewife, but frankly, sugar is expensive, and he wouldn't mind having it.  
  
Over the next week, Geoff's plan comes clear: the loft of the stables has a boarded over section that Wat uses to keep farming implements stowed. Old quilts, different seasons of clothing, cured meat, and trunks full of the girls' fine dresses lurk in the corners. Geoff shifts everything to one side and sets up a platform for the mattress. He somehow acquires a fourth or fifth hand dresser and a mirror slightly damaged around the edges. Elinor starts on embroidering him some drapes for the small circular windows at the apex of the attic space, and with the typesetter's help, Geoff finds a desk and chair sturdy enough to hold his typewriter.   
  
"You'll freeze," Wat says, plucking at the freshly stuffed mattress. Geoff is sorting through the horse blankets, sniffing them. Those that smell adequately clean will go on the bed until he can help the girls with their quilt. Wat wants to ask him how he's learned patchwork and quilting, but isn't sure he wants to know.  
  
"Nonsense," Geoff tells him. "It's getting warmer, after all. Besides." He looks up at Wat with his warmest smile, from where he's down on his knees, surrounded by rough woolen weave. "You don't want me waking you up when I've got to write. And this way, your tenants won't complain about the sound." Which nicely eliminates any chance for Wat to ask him to stay in his small room, and, thusly, saves him from humiliating himself. He's strangely grateful.   
  
Still, Wat crosses his arms over his chest. "I don't like the idea of you out here alone."   
  
Geoff propps his arm on one knee and points up. "Sweetness, I'm still under your roof. You're still getting my paychecks to do with as you please."  
  
Wat scowls at the endearment, and nudges Geoff with his foot. "That isn't what I meant."  
  
Geoff gives him a cunning look and traps one ankle in his hand, running up under Wat's pant leg to rub at his calf. "You're worried we won't be giving your tenants anything to complain about?"  
  
Wat doesn't think it's necessary to reply to something like that with anything more than a sharper kick to Geoff's leg. Geoff catches the foot, looking positively wicked, and tugs Wat closer by his pants. "I want to try something," Geoff tells him, smoothing his hands up Wat's thighs.   
  
It doesn't take much more than that to catch Wat's interest. He's starting to learn that when Geoff says certain things, in that certain tone, his body responds whipcrack fast. It's been three months, and they're spending nights Wat's bed, and yes, there's been touching, but it's different in the dark than it is in a barn, the restless sounds of horses coming up from two storeys below. "Try what?" he asks, his eyes wide, and Geoff is sliding forward on his knees, sitting back on his feet, and bracketing Wat's hips with his hands.   
  
"Something I really like about these chaps," Geoff tells him, as though there'd been no question at all. He slides his hands back to Wat's ass, where the material changes. "They frame all the indecent bits of you."  
  
And just like that, he's nuzzling into the fly of Wat's trousers. "What – " Wat tries, startled, and ends up twining his fingers through the silky strands of Geoff's hair. "What are you doing?"  
  
"Hush," Geoff says, and it comes out as a huff of hot breath against his groin, and he has to bite his lip not to groan. Geoff is undoing his flies, popping buttons on the dark denim and unbuckling the chaps and moving everything just a bit this way and a bit that way until Wat's cock is hanging out of his pants.   
  
Geoff looks as though he's been presented a particularly difficult riddle and has just come up with the answer. He raises his fingers off of Wat's hip to brush at Wat's skin, coaxing him along to arousal. Wat doesn’t need the encouragement. "Where did you – " Wat stammers, and then has to close his eyes and his throat because Geoff is so, so warm on him, and he's trying so hard not to move closer.   
  
"Overheard someone talking about it," Geoff says, and Wat can hear every word, but he can also  _feel_  it, on his skin. Geoff's hands drift back to his balls, stroking them forward, so gently. He cups them in his palm, weighs them, and then squeezes just a bit. "And I thought, well, I enjoy it." He poses it as a question, and looks up at Wat.   
  
As if Wat can try and answer something like that. He manages a nod – yes, he likes it, he's had it before, he's done this. Nothing they've tried so far, really, is anything he hasn't done or had done to him. But this – this is –   
  
"And so I thought," Geoff is saying, his cheek resting against Wat's open fly, his mouth so, so close, hand still teasing up and down Wat's length, "Well, if a lady can do it, there's no reason I can't."  
  
And that probably would've made Wat laugh and swat at Geoff, and explain to him that just because he  _could_  do something a lady could, didn't mean he  _ought_  to.  
  
Except that's when Geoff sneaks out his tongue and laps just once at the base of Wat's cock, and his lips follow. He kisses up its length, one hand drawing circles in the skin at Wat's hip, under his shirt. The other is still trailing over his balls, rolling them over his fingers. And Geoff's mouth – Wat decides he will never, never complain about Geoff's mouth again, as it lips along his cock and kisses the tip.   
  
"Nice," Geoff murmurs, and flattens his tongue and licks, long, long, long and wet just over the tip. Wat wails and tightens his grip in Geoff's hair. Geoff pets his hip again, and murmurs, "easy," and Wat manages to loosen his grip – it probably isn't terribly pleasant, he doesn't imagine, and he likes Geoff's hair too much to tear it out.   
  
Geoff goes to work, then, really goes to work on him, and Wat realizes that even if he's had this done before, one or two or a few girls coming to him in the field or on summer nights after the barn raisings or in the stables, friends of his sisters or visiting girls from the train, none of them knew what they were doing. Not really. Not like this. None of them knew what was good, what would feel right to them if they were the ones having it done, because they  _couldn't_  have it done to them, and oh, God, Wat wants to move his hips  _so badly_ , to push further into Geoff's mouth. But Geoff won't allow it, keeping him in place with the hand on his belly and the firm grip behind that keep Wat's legs from working at all.   
  
He wonders, if he collapsed, would Geoff keep going.  
  
He risks a look down, which is probably a bad idea, because Geoff is working him inside his mouth, the slight bulge of tongue and  _himself_  in Geoff's cheek, and then a shockingly good stripe of heat up the underside. Geoff's mouth stretches around him, and his hand making up the difference where his lips can't reach.  
  
Wat has never lost his breath so quickly. He touches his fingers to Geoff's face, and the sea-blue eyes are on him. Wat isn't sure what he'd been trying to convey with that touch, but nothing had prepared him for the pleased hunger in Geoff's expression, or the hollow of his cheeks as he suddenly decides that sucking is in order.   
  
The sweet hollow suction around his skin, the hot, wet, brilliance of everything about Geoff is making Wat's brain short out. None of this is working, he isn't sure how his brain is still filtering so quickly, how he knows to distinguish one touch from another. But somehow, he does notice when Geoff does more than suck – he starts to move his head up and down, his lips moving back and forth over Wat's skin, tongue rubbing over and over the sensitive spot under Wat's crown, and Wat can feel him swallowing – the saliva that must be gathering after so long, or the little spurts of liquid Wat can feel himself leaking in anticipation.   
  
It's a suddenly horrifying thought, that he's about to come in Geoff's mouth, and he tugs on Geoff's hair in warning, two sharp tugs, different from the helpless clench of before. Move, he tries to say. Don't, he tries to say.  
  
Except Geoff is looking up at him again, and somehow – though Wat thinks later he must've imagined it – smiling around his cock. And then he's doing something -  _something_  - with his fingers, Wat isn't sure what, but it's brilliant and then, oh oh  _oh god_  -   
  
He comes, harder than he has in months, and somewhere in between slipping out of Geoff's mouth and his legs giving out Geoff catches him with both hands, eases him down, and he's quite pleased, when he finds himself on the floor, to not be bleeding.   
  
Geoff is still between his thighs, licking him clean, which makes the shuddering goodness of it last even longer than hands and touching and the rocking back and forth they've been trying at night. And then Geoff is in front of him, smiling that particular soft smile he has that makes Wat's throat close up.   
  
Wat reaches a hand up and pulls him down, kisses him thoroughly, despite Geoff's noise of surprise. He tastes different, not bad, like both of them together and the ejaculate he's licked off his own hand only warmer, better. They break, and Geoff tips their foreheads together. "Well," he says, a little breathlessly. "I'd say that was worth it."  
  
Wat shoves him off and crawls over him, tearing open Geoff's trousers to pull out the undiminished erection there. "Like hell," he says, and lowers his mouth.  
  


* * *

  
  
They're in Wat's attic room one night when Geoff rolls over in bed, off of Wat's chest, where he's been draped for the last hour connecting freckles with a finger.   
  
"Mm?" Wat says, unwilling to move anymore than that, not when he's so comfortable with one hand behind his head. Geoff has knelt up to peer through the window.  
  
"Huh," is his only reply.   
  
"What's that, then?" Wat asks, and nudges Geoff's bottom with his knee.   
  
"Well," Geoff says, and turns away from the window to grin at him, as though just becoming aware of Wat's presence. "Nothing's quite as important as touching your chest. But." He likes saying things like this, things that make the flush on Wat's face creep down his throat. Which could be a trick of the oil lamp, but it does make him look good. "Our roofs are level."  
  
Wat snorts at him. "'Course they're level. The barn's connected." He reaches up past the bars of his headboard and knocks on the wall, as though this somehow demonstrates. The barn and the house make an L-shape, and Geoff grins down at him.   
  
"Really," Geoff says. It'd be so easy to knock out the wall, some day, and connect their rooms. He could throw up a wall at the other end of the loft in the stable, a room where he could write without disturbing Wat. The barn is comfortable for now, but he isn't sure he's going to keep Wat from hauling him indoors once the fall's frost sets in.  
  
"Really," Wat echoes, clearly not believing that nothing is up. "Why?"  
  
"No reason," Geoff reassures him, and climbs down on top of him again. Wat seems disinclined to agree, so Geoff decides that this will be the night that he shows Wat how to make Geoff come just from playing with his nipples.   
  
Really, in the end, Geoff thinks, they both win.  
  


* * *

  
  
"Beatrice tells me you got banned from the church," Geoff says one morning in early May. It's not the sort of thing Wat has learned to expect instead of 'good morning,' so he does look up from the water pump, startled.   
  
Geoff is sitting on the back stoop, elbows on his knees, hands dangling between his legs, staring at him. It's a very expectant expression.  
  
Wat gives a mild shrug. "If that's what she said."  
  
The look on Geoff's face turned cunning. "She said you punched the priest."  
  
"Less than he deserved," is Wat's answer as he pushes past Geoff to get through into the kitchen.   
  
"That's fairly accurate for my interactions with the church," Wat hears Geoff say to no one in particular. Then he comes in through the back door and pulls an apple out of the bowl on the table. Apples came in on the train two days ago, and neither of them have had their fill of the fruit yet. "So?" he asks. "Are you going to tell me what happened?"  
  
"No," Wat says gruffly.  
  
Alice comes in through the back door with a folded pile of cloth, startling them both. "Geoffrey," she says, because she won't call him anything else, despite Geoff's best efforts. Wat rather enjoys this defiance on her part, and doesn't make an overlarge effort to fix the problem, deaf to Geoff's protests. "The quilt's done."  
  
"The qu – " Geoff says, and Wat has the pleasure of seeing him dumb-struck for a moment. "But you said we'd finish it together."  
  
"We didn't want you to see the design," Alice says, and then Elinor and Beatrice are coming in. "Cecily helped too," Elinor adds. "And Tamsin," Beatrice says, matter-of-factly. "But she didn't want to say."  
  
Geoff is blinking at them. Deciding he doesn't want to miss this, Wat turns from the sink in time to see Alice whip the quilt open. It's light, perfect for the spring. It gives them enough time to work on a heavier one for winter.   
  
With Wat's own quilts, the girls have done masterpieces of knotwork on the patches – they blend together into seasonal scenes, four quilts, one for each season, in vibrant blues and golds and reds and oranges. Wat doesn't understand, even as someone who's particularly good with his hands, what it is they do to make the quilts so beautiful. There's just something about them that comes alive.  
  
Wat already knows, when he sees the quilt explode into full length overhead, that whatever they have made will be brilliant.  
  
Draped over the dining table in the kitchen, Geoff stands and spreads his hands over it, over the beautiful patchwork. "Girls," he breathes. They beam at him, blushing and twisting their hands in their aprons or tucking hair behind ears, waiting for more.   
  
It doesn't appear Geoff can manage more, for a moment. Wat's seen him like this before, when Wat tells him something particularly odd, or touches him in a certain way, and Geoff goes quiet, like his words have left him, and he has to follow the trail back.  
  
Embroidered on the quilt is a large, ornate hawk feather. It's dirtied at the end. A scroll of parchment, rolled one way at one end and the opposite way on the other. The parchment has writing on it, not real words, really, but scribbles of ink that have come out of the ink well in the corner of the quilt. Geoff's eyes shine, and his fingers trace the words on the paper.  
  
"We found the design," Elinor says. "And Cecily helped make it big, so it would come out right. It came out right?"  
  
"It came out right," Geoff echoes quietly. He manages to tear his eyes away from the quilt and looks up at the girls. "Thank you," he says vehemently. "Thank you, so, so much." He comes around from the table, and advances on them, and the girls look like they aren't sure what to do with themselves until he's got all three of them in his arms at once, and Wat has to grin, because they all just look so  _happy_.  
  
The girls make plans to take the quilt and have it aired, and then to go and tidy up Geoff's loft – he warns them off of touching the typewriter, as he always does, and tells them that they don't have to, as he always does, but off they go anyway with the quilt in tow, pleased as anyone could be at Geoff's reaction.  
  
Geoff watches them leave, a goofy smile on his face, arms crossed satisfactorily over his chest.   
  
And then he's looking at Wat the same way. It makes Wat start, and scowl a little. "What?" he asks.  
  
"You," Geoff says, in a mildly accusatory way. "You have raised three  _fantastic_  girls."   
  
"I've done nothing of the sort," Wat tells him matter-of-factly. "It's all our mother."  
  
"Idiot," Geoff says affectionately, and suddenly Wat is being thrown into the same embrace his sisters were. Except he's being kissed, as well, as happy and loving a kiss as he's ever had, really.   
  
"You're family," Wat says roughly, when Geoff lets him speak again. Their arms are around one another, Wat's around Geoff's waist and one of Geoff's in his hair, stroking at the back of his neck.   
  
Geoff gives him a pleased smile. "I've never been given something like this," he says.   
  
"Well, then," Wat says, and blinks, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "You're overdue."  
  


* * *

  
  
It's another three weeks before Wat tells him what happened with the church.   
  
Geoff's spent the day in town, talking with the typesetter's wife, trying to come up with a name for the baby girl that's due to come along in seven months' time. When he comes back, the girls look nervous, and Jonathan's behind the bar. Cecily intercepts him at the door, and starts marching him back toward town. "You've got to talk some sense into him," she tells him.  
  
"That usually doesn't work very well," he tells her, but the joke makes her frown. "About what?"   
  
"He's gone storming down to the parish," Cecily tells him. "He's going to kill someone, I just know it."  
  
"What?" Geoff stops, and frowns. And then, before she can answer, shakes her off. "I'll ride."  
  
He takes the dappled brown, and gets into town in ten minutes.   
  
When he gets to the church, he has to tear Wat off of the priest. It doesn't take much, really, because Wat's already given the priest a bloody nose and what looks like a fairly impressive black eye. One of the alter boys is cowering in the corner and, from Geoff can tell, has already had his mother informed of his actions, whatever they may be.  
  
He peels Wat off of the man and gets him onto the horse. He doesn't bother saying anything to the priest, because he hasn't bothered saying anything to priests in a long, long time.   
  
It isn't until they're nearly back to the saloon – he's taken the ride slow this time, giving Wat a chance to calm down in a place where he can't escape, trapped between Geoff and the reins – when Wat bursts out with, "They tried to light the stables on fire."  
  
Geoff's eyebrows go up immediately. "What?"  
  
"They tried to light the stables on fire," Wat growls, his hands fisting into the reins. It makes the horse whinny, and Geoff speeds her a bit.   
  
"Why would they do that?" He keeps his voice level. No one knows about them. No one who matters knows about them – the typesetter and his wife, the blacksmith, the farmer boy he's met a few times. Wat's sisters. No one who seems to care, really.  
  
"Beatrice," Wat snarls.  
  
Geoff isn't sure what to make of this. Mostly because he's never heard Wat speak of one of his family members with such hatred in his voice. Especially not Beatrice who, if Geoff had to pick, is rather his favorite.   
  
"Oh, they  _said_  that it was you – " Wat is saying, and that certainly catches Geoff's attention. "The little brat I found with the matches in the hayloft. Said it was your writing, what you'd been publishing – "  
  
"Whoa," Geoff says to the horse, slowing them up again. Then to Wat: "But what's this about Beatrice, then?"  
  
Wat makes a growling sound, and thumps Geoff on the thigh. Geoff says nothing. "It's the reason she came to me. She – there was a man. Who she was in love with. Only he wasn't in love with her, not really, and she – they – "  
  
"Oh," Geoff says, and he winces at how startles it sounds. "He – he left her – in a situation."  
  
"God damn right it was a situation." Wat is twisting his hands in his shirt. "We – we took Beatrice to a doctor. The doctor said it would – "  
  
"She's so tiny – " Geoff says, cottoning on.  
  
" – and the doctor could save her life, if he - the baby – "  
  
"Oh, God," Geoff says, and sighs. "Wat – "  
  
"Shut up," Wat growls, harsher than Geoff's ever heard him.  
  
"No," Geoff says calmly, and kisses him on the cheek. He readjusts the reins so that he can have one hand on either side of Wat, around his waist, and squeezes him close. "You did the right thing."  
  
"The priest says – "   
  
"The priest's an idiot," Geoff says. "And you did the right thing."  
  
"I know that," Wat says, defensive, but doesn't hit him again. "I'm tired of dealing with it, is all."  
  
"The shotgun when the train comes in?"  
  
Wat makes a noise of confirmation, and sulks all the way back to the stables. They put the horse up together, and then Geoff kisses him properly, and doesn’t let him go until he's a bit more himself again.  
  
Cecily doesn't ask how Geoff got him back, or how Geoff's brought his temper down, but all of the girls show their own way of thanking him – fresh flowers cut from Beatrice the next day being the best part of all. "We'll put them in the kitchen," Geoff tells her, kisses her forehead. "So we can all share them."  
  
He spends the next two days watching Wat, who doesn't sleep for fear of having the stables burned down. Geoff sends him off to bed and takes over, doing his writing while he can. And the next day, he goes down to speak to the priest – something he hasn't done in years – and informs him that he'll speak with the Mayor, if he must, since he knows the sheriff won't do anything.  
  
The priest sweats a lot, which Geoff finds more than mildly distasteful, and he leaves knowing he's done his piece.  
  
When he comes back, he takes Wat to bed. They spend the afternoon sleeping, tangled up together, in the warming spring sun, and they relearn one another, slowly, carefully, piece by piece. For once, Geoff doesn't speak. He's too busy thinking.  
  
He isn't sure, but he thinks it's possible he's in love with Wat.  
  


* * *

  
  
Wat likes New Mexico most for its summers.  
  
It's difficult, really, to get through the days – they're long and hot and sweltering and none of his drinks stay cool and the whole saloon smells like tobacco and bodies. But the evening cool comes early, before the sunsets, and by nighttime it can be downright chilly. That's more than can be said for the other states that he's lived in, and so, it is his favorite.   
  
It's night already, and cool, and Wat can hear the coyotes off in the distance, hunting. But he isn't paying attention to any of that, because he's in Geoff's bed, stroking between the man's legs. It's cool and dark, but they're keeping one another warm. And Wat's gotten used to that, really, and used to waking up with the other man. He's gotten used to all of it, having Geoff around, having him disappear for days at a time to tinker on a story, and then, just as suddenly, be underfoot.   
  
He's gotten used to touching, but he doesn't think he'll ever get used to being touched. Not when Geoff always has something new and terrifying and brilliant to show him. Wat's come up with a bit of it himself – he was the one to try licking all over, really, and they worked out together how amazing it could feel, Geoff's spectacularly long fingers inside him, or Wat's strong digits stroking inside of Geoff.   
  
But he doesn't know what to expect when, that night, as Wat's stroking Geoff closer and closer to incoherency, Geoff suddenly stops him with a gasp.   
  
"Wait," he pants into Wat's neck, and then kisses him, like he can't help it. Wat knows the feeling.   
  
"What is it?" Wat asks, not patient at all, and doesn't entirely stop his touching – Geoff's starting to get a bit wet around the tip, and he wants to milk out the moisture there and spread it all down his length.   
  
Geoff dips one long arm down under the bed and comes up with – Wat squints. A jar of something.   
  
"Thought I hadn't brought you anything from California," Geoff says, a laugh husking through his voice as he pushes his hips into the circle of Wat's fingers.   
  
"What is it?" Wat asks, curious.   
  
Geoff gets the top off with his teeth. "Fingers in," he suggests.   
  
Haltingly, Wat dips the tip of one finger into the goo. It feels like…pomade, really, but it doesn't have the awful fruity smell. As with most other things, he tastes it. It…doesn't taste like anything, really. He looks at Geoff, curious.   
  
"Fingers in," Geoff tells him again and, as Wat complies, explains. "It's…a bit wax, I think, but mostly moisturizer. Salons in California are starting to show up, women coming out to help with their husbands' panning. But this – isn't for women."   
  
Wat blinks up at him, rubbing the goop between his fingers. And then, suddenly, he understands. "Oh. Oh, Geoff, I don't – I don't think that's a good idea."  
  
"Just try it," Geoff tells him, nosing at his cheek. He kisses Wat, and drops one hand out of his hair to Wat's cock, encouraging that way. "Please. I want to feel you."  
  
Wat, worried for the first time in a while that he's going to do something absolutely wrong, reaches behind Geoff and pulls him closer, and touches his fingertips to Geoff's hole. Geoff's breath gusts out and into his ear. Encouraged, Wat tries – carefully – pressing. The finger sinks easily, he's surprised to feel, much more easily than when they've done this before with mouths and fingers. It takes more time, then. This – this is better, almost, because neither of them are quite so out of control yet. Satisfied he hasn't done anything wrong yet, Wat pulls his finger out and slides it in again.  
  
Geoff moans against him, a deep, throaty sound in the darkness, that makes Wat – if possible – even harder. They work this way for a few moments, Geoff loosely fisting Wat's erection, Wat sliding his index finger in and out of Geoff, both of them breathing heavily. The drapes are open on the window, and Wat can see the sheen of sweat on Geoff, from their activities and the day's heat.   
  
"More," Geoff says, and it's so quiet that Wat isn't sure if he's heard it or not, but slides his other finger in, carefully, so careful and slick, and Geoff groans again when he hooks his fingers up in that way they've tried, the way that makes his very insides twitch just thinking about it.   
  
He thinks he's done something wrong when Geoff moves, but no, Geoff is just moving against his fingers, thrusting down a bit, and it baffles Wat – makes his fingers hurt a bit, but mostly baffles him, until he sees that Geoff is reaching for the jar again. Slicking his own hand, and Wat can't see how they can do this at the same time, not without arms getting in the way.   
  
Except then Geoff's hand is dropping to his cock, already wet and wanting, and coating it with the slick substance.   
  
"Geoff – " Wat says, uncertain. "What are you – "  
  
"I want you," Geoff says, nosing against his cheek, panting as Wat works his fingers inside him. "Oh, god. I want you in – ah, do that again."  
  
Wat complies, trying not to think about what Geoff's said, whether he understands that there's no way Wat's cock could ever fit inside Geoff, not when two fingers is as far as they've tried before. "It'll hurt you," he says.  
  
"It might," Geoff admits. "But I think it'll work."  
  
"How do you know?" Wat demands, but he's working his fingers wider, trying to test for space. Geoff stretches around him, and moans.  
  
"There's – books – " he pants.  
  
Books. Wat ought to've known. Trust Geoff to find books about something like this. And just the thought of it makes him blush, but Geoff's crawling up him and moving, so that Wat has to pull his fingers out. Geoff moans a little at the loss, but then he's rising up over Wat and sinking –   
  
Wat grabs the base of his cock, to keep himself from coming, mostly, but also to keep himself from slipping away and hurting Geoff, and apparently this wasn't in the book, or perhaps Geoff is just too far addled to realize, but god god it feels good, scorching fire around him and the whimpering that Geoff is making, that isn't pain, it shouldn't be. Wat wraps his hand around Geoff's erection from where it's been rubbing against his stomach, just to be sure. Geoff cries out at that, some inarticulate word, and crushes their mouths together as he sinks himself full-hilt onto Wat.  
  
Wat thinks he might stop breathing any second now.  
  
It takes a few moments, and Wat keeps stroking Geoff just in case, because it seems like Geoff's taking an awful long time dragging in each breath, but they manage to work it out. That it doesn't hurt, not when Geoff moves a bit, and when Wat accidentally slips down the bed and Geoff's eyes go wide and his mouth falls open, he doesn't move.  
  
"Don't move," Geoff breathes. And sinks onto him again, and lets loose a long, shattered cry. "Ohgodrightthere…"  
  
Wat pushes up into him, keeping his strokes careful and shallow, but Geoff won't allow it for long. He plants both hands on either side of Wat's head and moves up and down faster, sucking Wat down into some whirling abyss of pleasure, and it's all going too quickly, but Wat isn't used to this – to this heat, to anything that Geoff's doing to him.  
  
The only consolation is that Geoff seems, if possible, more destroyed by all this than him. He's sobbing into Wat's shoulder, something that Wat would find disturbing if he weren't so sure it was in pleasure, and hitching himself down onto each stroke like his life depends on it.  
  
It takes only a few more moments before they're flying, slamming together over and over and over again, and Wat's sure it's making the bed shake but he doesn't care, can't care, needs this and Geoff and all of it and oh, god, how could he have lived without someone this lovely for so long and some of it's coming out of his mouth, out loud, in ways that he doesn't prattle when they're in bed together.  
  
Geoff freezes up around him and then shouts, coming over his stomach, and – and Wat almost shouts himself – his insides are squeezing Wat like a vice, pulsing and beautiful, and Wat comes inside him, hot and wet and gorgeous.  
  
The collapse together, Wat strangling for air, the room spinning, Geoff's chest heaving against his own.  
  
Wat wants to ask if Geoff's alright, or if he ought to move, or if they did anything wrong, but somehow, he thinks they didn't. He's fairly sure they didn't. He's fairly sure that this was the most perfect thing he's ever done, and, more than anything, he wants to do it again. With Geoff.   
  


* * *

  
  
It's the full moon, and there isn't a cloud in the sky.  
  
The Fourth of July celebration was fun, children running everywhere – Geoff got to meet more of Wat's nieces and nephews, and he's trying to sort them out in his head, which was Jasper and which was Felix and how exactly Lewis fit into the order of siblings, but mostly, he's thinking about Wat's head on his stomach.  
  
They're lying on the roof, just over Geoff's room in the stable, on the flat of the stable. It's a slight slope to keep rainwater off, but mostly, they could lie here until dawn and watch the stars twinkle. It's just nice, having a handful of Wat's hair, stroking his forehead, feeling the way their hands twined on Wat's chest. Geoff doesn't want to move, and he doesn't want to speak, and he doesn't want to leave. Ever.  
  
There hasn't been any trouble with the church. He's spoken with the Mayor a time or two – not about that, but to have him for supper, because he figured it'd been far too long since he'd seen the man, and he wasn't surprised to find that just having the man in the saloon for a few hours was all the protection they'd need.   
  
Wat, he assumes, is asleep on him. Except he knows the sound of Wat sleeping by now, and it isn't this – Wat is thinking. He gives the hair under his hand a bit of a tug, and Wat rumbles against his stomach, both of them watching the stars.  
  
"Thinking?" Geoff askes quietly, in deference to the night.  
  
"Mm," Wat says again. "Want to ask you something."  
  
Geoff tilts his head to look at Wat, who is resolutely not looking at him. "Oh?"  
  
"Mm." Again. "Why'd you come back?"  
  
From California, Geoff knows immediately is what he means. There are a handful of reasons, really, but none that made any real sense – things he's guessed, things he's wondered about. Things that seemed worth it, at the time. He grins up into the dark, and resumes his stroking in Wat's hair. "Why wouldn't I have?"  
  
Wat shrugs, but doesn't seem at all put-out by what he says next. "Cranky boarder and his sisters isn't much."  
  
Geoff laughs. "Idiot."  
  
"Mph," Wat says, and squeezes his hand.  
  
Geoff sighs. "Idiot. It isn't much." He squeezes back, and they listen, for a moment to the sounds of the horses shifting, and the girls laughing too loud just below them, and a bit over. Geoff smiles. "It isn't much. It's everything."


	3. Chapter 3

It's getting on the end of autumn, and Wat hasn't seen Geoff in three days.

He knows, logically, that the man is here somewhere. Because food keeps disappearing, and there will be small scribbled notes left all over the bed when he comes back from tending to something, and they will be gone after he returns. Or the girls will sport new daisy chains at suppertime, and chatter amongst themselves about the state of what they're calling The Project. There's an awful lot of activity in the house, and the girls, one at a time, find reasons to draw Wat's attention away from things. He knows he's being played, but he doesn't know how, or why. 

It's really, really annoying Wat.

He tries to corner Geoff about it, out by the pump, or by the tracks, or by the odd wishing tree in the back by the laundry lines, but Geoff is in none of his normal haunts for writing, and thus cannot be corner. He doesn't show up for three nights in a row and, when Wat finally breaks down and treks over and up to Geoff's room – a place he knows he is allegedly invited but cannot help but feel he is invading unless personally accompanied – he doesn’t find the man there, either.

The fourth morning, Beatrice him to go with her into town and spend the day shopping. He goes unwillingly, but he isn't sure why. Something about leaving the saloon with the mystery unsolved unnerves him. He's almost sure he sees the blacksmith on the road toward the saloon on their way into town.

It isn't until the evening of the fourth day that Geoff reappears, looking distinctly like he's been Up To Something, and is so excited that he nearly tugs Wat's sleeve clean off, trying to get him to follow.

It isn't out the door, but up the stairs, that Geoff hauls him. 

They stop at the attic hatch, and Geoff hesitates for a moment, though his beaming, little-boy smile doesn't fade a whit. "Promise me you won't get mad," he says, and it isn't a question, and Wat refuses to make any such promise. Geoff takes a deep breath, pulls down the ladder, and gestures for Wat to go up.

Wat does. 

Geoff follows him up, beaming, and pulls the ladder up behind him. And then looks at Wat expectantly, twitching his eyebrows. He's positively bursting with excitement, and it makes Wat want to hit him.

"Well?" Wat demands, a little too loudly.

"Go on," Geoff says, and nods toward his door.

Carefully, still scowling, Wat reaches for the knob and opens the door.

It's his room inside. Only…not.

Wat's mouth is hanging open, he knows, and he clutches at the doorknob, but – but the wall is gone. The wall is gone.

"Geoff," he says, his voice shaking with confusion. This is a trick. Geoff is tricking him. This doesn't bode well at all. Something has gone horribly, horribly wrong, and Geoff is paying off his gambling debts with pieces of Wat's house. "Geoff, where is my wall?"

"Don't need it anymore," Geoff declares, and ducks under his arm – quite low – to get into the room. He goes in and – and back, into the loft of the barn, where Geoff's bed should be but isn't any longer. Past where the wall should be, and Wat just – doesn't understand. Any of it. The wall has moved back, a good twenty feet or so, and has effectively doubled the size of the room. The wood looks new, but well slatted. 

Gone is Wat's bed, replaced with a double, and he doesn't want to know where on earth his old one got to, or why he's got this one now. There's a curtain strung where the room bends into an L-shape, and he crosses to it tentatively, careful over the old threshold of the wall-no-more. He can see the change in wood on the floor, but other than that, it really is as though the barn and the house were built together. Beyond the curtain, there's a large metal tub, two mirrors hung, a toilet, a drysink, and the usual pitcher and bowl of water. 

Laying on the drysink, he sees as he approaches, is Geoff's chink of mirror and his straight razor. Wat reaches out to touch them with his fingertips and then pulls back. He ducks through the curtain again, and Geoff is leaning against a wall, looking at him. Next to his hip is the typewriter, on a desk, with a candle and scattered bits of paper. 

As if Geoff had lived here all along.

The remarkable thing, really, is the utter nonchalance of the way Wat's things have remained undisturbed. His dresser and his shelves remain in the same place, his closet is the same – there is another set of drawers, he notices, with Geoff's few items inside, he assumes – and the odd collection of junk he has garnered over his years remain utterly unmoved. 

He's staring at the new bed, mouth still slightly open, when he feels Geoff come up behind him, slide his hands around his waist to lay on his stomach. Geoff presses up close, and Wat lets his head prop on Geoff's shoulder and arm. 

"Alright?" Geoff says.

It takes Wat a moment. "No," he says. Geoff doesn't move behind him. Wat puts his hands over the hands on his stomach and pulls them across one another, into an embrace. "What is this?"

Geoff kisses the side of his head. "This is me moving in."

"The girls – " Wat says lamely, trying to be outraged at the suggestion and failing. 

"It was their idea," Geoff says. "Said I'd freeze if I spent the winter in the barn. You said the same, didn't you."

He has, in fact. And damn Geoff for making it sound logical, like that. "Your writing," he tries, and knows it sounds false even as he's saying it. 

"I'll write during the day." Wat knows that this is a lie – Geoff will write whenever the need seizes him. That Geoff has made allowances for Wat to remain sleeping when this happens makes something crash and shatter in his chest, and he clutches at Geoff's hands. "I'll use pencil and paper if I have to," Geoff confirms, and the little pieces in Wat's chest reform into something too big for his skin.

"Oh," he says lamely. 

"If you're alright with it," Geoff adds on, not hastily.

Wat looks at the bed – big enough for two, for both of them, for sprawling side by side or one on top of the other however they might please. For keeping warm in the winter, piled with all of their quilts and sleeping in as the snow piles up on the sill and the glass frosts over. Geoff could doodle in the haze of the cold on the glass, and then press his cold fingers into Wat's skin to warm them, and together – together – 

Together, the word shakes into Wat's head, that this, yes, this is together. Both of them. Ten months, both of them, and this isn't going away.

Geoff isn't going away.

"Why – " he sputters, and sounds bewildered even to himself. Geoff's arms tighten around him, and the man's face presses against his, ducking over Wat's shoulder and into his space.

"I wanted to," Geoff says quietly.

"But why now," Wat presses, wanting to understand. Thinking this is important. Thinking this is something he ought to ask because if he doesn't ask now he's going to want to know later and not know how to bring it up without getting angry or flustered. It's significant, this something, because it's only when people get married that they move their things in together. And Wat knows this isn't that, because they aren't like other people, or other couples, especially, and he wants nothing to do with marriage – and neither does Geoff. And it's more a bout family, since his sisters helped, but…but he has to ask, because it's something. It's really something.

Geoff sighs, just quietly and tiny in his ear, and kisses his cheek, like that's the answer. Wat thinks it might be, until Geoff speaks: "Because," Geoff says. "I love you."

Whatever it is that's firmed up inside of Wat again, two sizes too big, it wells up through his throat and falls out onto the floor with clunk. It takes him a moment to realize that his hands have gone claws on Geoff's wrists, and he forces himself to relax. "You – " he says, and can't get past that. He turns around in Geoff's embrace so fast that Geoff doesn't have a chance to pull back, and they're nearly nose to nose, still encircled by Geoff's arms.

"Love you," Geoff repeats, and cracks a happy smile on one side of his mouth. 

Wat doesn't have to face the indignity of not knowing what to say because Geoff kisses him, then, slow and sweet and lazy, and it's easy to fall into that. When they break apart, he has a bit of his brain back together, if not entirely in order. 

"Since when?" he demands. 

An eloquent shrug of one of Geoff's shoulders lets him know it's been a long time.

Wat doesn't say anything for a moment, squinting up at him. Then he touches his hand to the side of Geoff's head, and bends them together for another kiss. "Thank you," he mumbles. For the room, for saying it, for everything.

"Don't be ridiculous," Geoff says, and his tone is truly condemning. "I'm allowed to love you as I damn well please." As though, now that the phrase is out, there's no stopping it. 

It continues to make Wat's insides squirm. He looks up at Geoff who is – it's a look he's gotten used to, that soft expression. Tender, if he had to put a word to it, which he doesn't want to at all. "It's mutual," Wat mutters. And then hates himself for not saying it.

"I know," Geoff says, and doesn't seem to care in the least that Wat has failed this utterly. Suddenly, Geoff is pulling him back, bouncing both of them onto the foot of the bed, spread with a new quilt. Wat wants to open it and see what's designed on it, but settles for collapsing on top of Geoff and kissing him silly.

It's all they need, really, to keep them warm. The room, the bed, them. Just them.

It's enough, Wat knows.

It's more than enough.


End file.
